A Cossack Spring Read online

‘It’s too cold to stay here, Mrs Edwards, especially on your knees.’ John offered her his hand. She took it and rose stiffly. The cold had already permeated her joints.

  ‘Thank you for putting “and daughter”. Until it happened to my child, I never realised how cruel it was to deny the stillborn a grave.’

  ‘Had you chosen a name for her?’

  ‘We’d discussed boys’ names. Peter was insistent she was a boy, but he was teasing me. He’d have been delighted with a girl.’ Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. ‘He would have been a wonderful father.’

  ‘He would.’ John led her back to the carriage. ‘The crosses are temporary. I’ll call in a stonemason after the thaw, have the ground compacted, and arrange for permanent monuments to be erected. Would you like to choose one?’

  ‘Please, I’d like something plain with Peter’s name and dates and a mention of our child.’

  ‘And a line of text from the Bible?’ he suggested.

  ‘I’ll need time to find something suitable.’

  ‘You’ll have plenty of that, Mrs Edwards. It’s going to be a long, cold, hard winter. I’ve been warned that sometimes the snow doesn’t melt here until the middle of May.’

  ‘I used to love the spring.’ She walked through the gate. ‘Blossom on the trees in the London parks, snowdrops, then daffodils and tulips pushing through the flowerbeds. I sound like an old woman.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you before now, Mrs Edwards, but you – we – there didn’t seem to be an appropriate time.’

  ‘I can’t believe five weeks have passed since Peter died.’

  ‘Words aren’t sufficient to express my feelings on a loss that has sorely affected us all.’ John folded his hand over the gloved fingers she’d hooked into his elbow. ‘Friendship aside, I had complete confidence in Peter, his medical ability, and the way he – and you – would have run the hospital.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s comforting to know you thought highly of him.’ She looked back at the graves.

  A picture so real filled her mind that she shuddered. She saw Peter’s tall, perfect body lying shrouded in white silk and lace in his coffin six feet below the ground. His face marble white, ice cold in death. After five weeks in the earth in these temperatures his corpse would be frozen solid as would that of the child lying on his breast. But the warmth of spring would bring decay. Dark spots would appear and rot his white, fraying, fragile skin. His hair and nails would work loose …

  She hated herself for thinking that way. For not remembering Peter as he’d been, striding through life, vital, alive, loving – would she have been able to recall him and the times they’d shared differently if she wasn’t a nurse and hadn’t seen so much death?

  She realized John was still talking.

  ‘… It’s ironic that now, when Peter is no longer with us, the workmen have finally made progress. Alexei tells me they expect to have the hospital ready for use in a day or two.’

  ‘You will appoint Nathan Kharber director, won’t you, Mr Hughes? He’s an excellent doctor and has worked tirelessly in the Beletsky House. I know some people here don’t approve of the Jews …’

  ‘I trust you’re thinking of the count, not me,’ John said.

  ‘The count, the Cossacks, the Mujiks … Nathan and Ruth told me none of them like Jews.’

  ‘It runs deeper than dislike.’ John helped her into the carriage. ‘There’ve been problems for centuries that have culminated in massacres and pogroms. It’s not just the ignorant who are anti-Semitic. The count is educated, yet Mrs Ignatova told me he blames the Jews for introducing cholera into his house.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You, I, Mrs Ignatova, Alexei, and common sense know that. But it’s not only the peasants who are superstitious in this part of the world.’

  ‘As a nurse I can honestly say no one could have saved those who died. The death rate from cholera has always been high. If it weren’t for Dr Kharber, Glyn, Richard, and the Beletskys’ servants would be lying in the cemetery alongside Peter, Huw, and the others.’

  ‘Nathan told me Glyn and Richard are out of danger. Is he being optimistic?’

  ‘No. They’ll be well enough to return to Glyn’s house tomorrow.’

  ‘Mrs Ignatova said you intend to work in the hospital as soon as it’s ready. Are you sure you’re not putting your own health at risk in doing so, Mrs Edwards?’

  ‘I need something to keep me occupied, Mr Hughes.’

  ‘You look pale.’

  ‘It’s the cold. This is the first time I’ve been out of doors since … since …’ Her voice broke.

  The driver closed the door of the sleigh and climbed into his seat. They moved off.

  ‘I hate bringing this up, but I have to say it, Mrs Edwards. If you want to leave Hughesovka, I’ll understand and arrange passage for you on the first ship bound for Britain out of Taganrog after the spring thaw.’

  ‘Leave … you don’t want me to be matron now Peter’s gone?’

  ‘I assumed without Peter you wouldn’t want to stay.’

  She turned her head and looked back, as much as to conceal her tears as take a last look at the cemetery. ‘I couldn’t leave Peter and our child, Mr Hughes.’

  ‘They are with God, not in that Russian earth, Mrs Edwards. If you’re worried about their grave being neglected, please don’t trouble yourself. I’ll arrange for the upkeep of any memorial you want placed there.’

  ‘I hoped you’d allow me to stay.’

  ‘I would be delighted but I was thinking of you. You must have parents, brothers, sisters, people who care for you.’

  ‘No, Mr Hughes.’ She pushed her gloved fingers deeper into the muff Catherine had given her. ‘I have no one, and nowhere else to go.’

  ‘It wouldn’t upset you to see Nathan Kharber work in the hospital?’

  ‘After the way he cared for his patients during the cholera epidemic, he deserves the post.’ Nathan had proved his worth to her when he’d asked her advice. She hadn’t worked with any doctor other than Peter who’d been prepared to admit that a nurse could contribute knowledge that could aid treatment. ‘Nathan Kharber is a dedicated doctor who’s received a thorough training. He speaks English, Russian, and, according to Alexei, several other languages. He’s sympathetic, kind, and gentle, and conversant with the latest medical theories on the treatment of disease. You couldn’t find a more dedicated or suitable man, Mr Hughes.’

  ‘Could you work with him?’

  ‘You mean if he took Peter’s place?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hughes, I could work with him. You see,’ she looked up and met his steady gaze. ‘All I have left is my profession.’

  ‘Then you’ll remain in Hughesovka as matron of my hospital.’

  ‘If you’ll have me, Mr Hughes.’

  ‘I count myself blessed to have your expertise, Mrs Edwards.’

  Glyn Edwards’ house, Hughesovka

  January 1871

  Glyn was surprised when Sarah joined him at the breakfast table. ‘Good morning, shouldn’t you be in bed?’

  ‘I could ask you the same question.’ She looked him over with a professional eye. He’d lost a great deal of weight and appeared frail, a shadow of the man he’d been only a few short weeks before.

  ‘Now we’ve determined we both look dreadful, let’s change the subject. Do you know Alexei’s moving in?’

  ‘He told me before we left the mansion.’

  ‘If you’d rather not stay in your room, you could take one of the others …’

  ‘Praskovia told me you’d warned her I might want to exchange my room with the one Alexei’s taken. I’d rather stay where I am, Glyn, but thank you for the thought.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to make you more comfortable …’

  ‘I’m fine, Glyn, please don’t treat me as an invalid. Peter’s absence isn’t going to be easy for either of us. I never had a brother but I look on you a
s one. I hope you don’t mind me staying in your house.’

  ‘I’m glad you want to continue living here. When Mr Hughes said he was going to offer you the opportunity to return to London, I hoped you’d turn him down.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something to me before Mr Hughes took me to the cemetery yesterday?’

  ‘I didn’t want you to feel you had to stay in Hughesovka on my account.’

  ‘You know my history, Glyn. You know I have nowhere else to go. Especially now when the two people I loved the most are buried here.’

  ‘I can’t believe Peter’s gone.’ Glyn stared at the door as though he expected him to walk through it.

  ‘Thank you for saying his name. It’s good to know other people remember him.’

  ‘It doesn’t hurt you to talk about him?’

  ‘It hurts more when people try to pretend he never existed. I want to concentrate on what I had with Peter, not what I’ve lost.’ She checked the nurse’s watch pinned to the top corner of her apron. ‘I must go. I promised the girls I would look round the hospital this morning and make a list of what needs to be done before we can move patients into the wards.’

  ‘We didn’t celebrate Christmas or New Year this year, Sarah, but I want you to have this.’ He handed her a small package.

  ‘Peter bought something for you …’

  ‘Keep it for next year and open that when you’re alone.’

  She couldn’t bring herself to wish him a ‘Happy New Year’ when she knew it would be anything but for both of them. ‘God be with you this coming year, Glyn.’ She thrust the package into her apron pocket and left.

  Glyn Edwards’ house, Hughesovka

  January 1871

  Duster in hand, Praskovia left the drawing room when she heard the front door open. Alexei was hauling his bags into the house.

  ‘Mr Edwards said you were moving out of the mansion today and into Mr Thomas’s old room. I thought you’d return to your grandmother’s.’

  ‘All my grandmother and I do when we see one another is cry. Besides, I work so closely with Mr Edwards and Richard we decided it would be better for us to live as well as work together. As for sleep, I doubt any of us are going to do much of that until the furnaces are operational.’

  ‘The room is ready for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He kissed her cheek.

  ‘Can I talk to you?’

  ‘That sounds serious.’

  ‘It is. Pyotr, take Mr Beletsky’s bags upstairs to the front bedroom, please.’

  ‘Mr Thomas’s old room,’ Pyotr grinned at Alexei.

  ‘It’s Mr Beletsky’s room now.’

  ‘What’s this “Mr Beletsky”? I’m the same old Alexei, Pyotr,’ Alexei called after him.

  ‘You’re a guest of the master.’

  ‘A paying guest. “Mr” me again and I’ll tickle you until you scream. Vlad is bringing my trunk. Mr Hughes has offered him a job in the hospital. Between them Mr Hughes and Grandmother have taken on all my father’s former servants. The Beletsky Mansion will be empty of people this time tomorrow.’

  ‘What does your father intend to do with it?’

  ‘He can burn it down for all I care.’

  ‘It’s your childhood home, sir …’

  ‘I mean it, Praskovia. Call me Alexei, not “Mr” and certainly not “sir”,’ he ordered. ‘I called in the office on the way here. Mr Edwards told me to tell you, he and Richard will be on time for dinner. As I will.’

  ‘Neither the master nor Richard should be working.’

  ‘They haven’t recovered,’ Alexei agreed, ‘but I wouldn’t like to try to stop them from doing what they feel has to be done.’

  ‘Tea and cold snacks are set out in the dining room. With Mr Edwards, Richard, and Mr Mahoney in and out at all hours, Mrs Edwards getting the hospital ready for its opening although she looks as though she’s knocking on death’s door, and Miss Anna doing what she can to help Mrs Edwards, I never know who’ll be in for meals and who won’t.’

  ‘I could eat.’

  ‘You can always eat.’ She avoided calling him anything. They went into the dining room where he helped himself to a plate of savouries and a glass of tea from the samovar.

  ‘What’s this serious talk about?’ he asked.

  ‘You and me.’

  ‘You and me?’ he repeated, mystified.

  ‘You and me being you and me no longer.’

  He understood. ‘You’ve met someone? That’s marvellous.’

  ‘Not when he won’t come near me because he thinks I’m in love with you.’

  ‘Now my father’s disowned me there’s no point in us continuing to pretend. It’s time I told my grandmother the truth.’

  ‘And everyone else?’

  ‘Grandmother’s the only one who matters. Once she knows, I’ll write a declaration that we are not in love, never have been, never will be, and nail it to the church door in Alexandrovka.’

  ‘Save yourself the trouble and just tell Lyudmila. She’ll broadcast it from Taganrog to St Petersburg.’

  ‘I’ll need time to talk to Ruth and Nathan as well as Grandmother. Can you wait a week?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be that quick.’

  ‘It does. With my father in St Petersburg, there’s no reason for Ruth and me to wait to be married.’

  ‘You won’t be twenty-one for two years.’

  ‘One year and four months,’ he corrected, ‘but if Father Grigor and Nathan agree we could marry sooner. Thank you, Praskovia; you’ve given me a reason to act. I’ll go and see Ruth now.’ He winked at her. ‘Good luck with your paramour. Am I allowed to know his identity?’

  ‘Not until I know whether he loves me back.’

  ‘Tell him from me he’s a lucky man.’ He picked up a plate of sweet blinys stuffed with apple and cherry preserves. ‘The girls cleaning the hospital will be hungry.’

  ‘If they are, how many of those will they see?’ Praskovia demanded.

  ‘The wolf’s share.’

  ‘I’ll ask Anna how many you delivered.’

  ‘I promise not to eat more than three.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘No more than six,’ he amended as he went out of the front door.

  Hospital, Hughesovka

  January 1871

  Alexei found Ruth scrubbing the brick floor in the ward kitchen. It had windows on both sides. One looked out onto a patch of ground and beyond it the separate single-storey building that housed staff, the other the inside corridor that led to the wards. Aware they could be seen and the place was full of builders as well as Ruth’s fellow maids who were cleaning under Sarah’s supervision, they stood at opposite ends of the room.

  He began by telling her about his and Praskovia’s conversation. ‘… So, rather than ruin Praskovia’s chance of romance, I’ve decided to tell Grandmother about us. What do you think?’

  ‘I, like you, have had enough of sneaking around pretending we’re only friends.’

  He misunderstood her. ‘Are you saying you want to stop seeing me?’

  ‘I don’t want to see less of you, Alexei, I want to see more. In fact,’ she hesitated. ‘I want us to make love.’

  The room fell so quiet he could hear his pocket watch ticking in his waistcoat. ‘If you get pregnant?’

  ‘Nathan would have to allow us to marry.’

  ‘That’s not the way I want I to marry you.’

  ‘You’re the one who says this is a new age. Mrs Edwards has shown all of us girls things that can be used to prevent pregnancy. French letters men can wear and shields women can put inside them to prevent conception …’

  ‘Mrs Edwards has been talking to you about sex!’

  ‘Nurses need to be aware of all problems related to health. We may have to advise women on how to avoid unwanted pregnancies so they don’t have to resort to abortions that can kill both mother and child. The best way to do that is to give women aids that can prevent pregnancy.’
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  ‘If the church finds out …’

  ‘Mrs Edwards says lovemaking is nothing to do with religion. It’s personal and wonderful between a man and woman and of no concern to anyone else. She also said it should be enjoyable and it won’t be for women until they have the threat of unwanted pregnancies lifted.’

  ‘The church would disagree, and although I don’t know for sure, I suspect your rabbi would too.’

  ‘Rabbi Goldberg and Father Grigor are old men. They’ve no right to tell you and me how to live our lives outside of the church and synagogue. If God didn’t want you and me to lie together he wouldn’t have allowed us to fall in love.’

  Alexei was shocked by the thought of Ruth discussing sex with Sarah, but then he remembered his mother and how she’d been worn down by successive pregnancies. Of the arguments between his father and grandmother over his father’s determination to father as many children as he could. Would his mother have found the strength to fight cholera if she hadn’t been pregnant and weakened by constant childbearing?

  ‘Alexei …’

  ‘Have you told Mrs Edwards about us?’

  ‘No, because there’s nothing to tell. I wish there was. Does it shock you that I want to make love with you? I thought after what had happened to your mother and sisters you’d feel the same way. Life is precious and uncertain. I don’t want to go to my grave a virgin, Alexei. Not feeling the way I do about you.’

  ‘If Mrs Edwards starts telling women how to avoid having children or distributing French letters to the women in the shtetl and Alexandrovka she’ll have husbands as well as priests …’

  Ruth interrupted in a loud voice. ‘Alexei, thank your grandmother for the Hanukkah gifts of food and warm clothing she sent to the shtetl.’

  Alexei glanced through the window and saw Anna and Yulia in the corridor. ‘I will.’

  ‘I’ll walk you out.’

  ‘Anna, Yulia, I brought you some of Praskovia’s blinys,’ Alexei gave them the plate.

  ‘Thank you for not eating all of them, although from the smears of preserves there were a lot more,’ Yulia observed.

  ‘Ruth ate them. I couldn’t stop her.’

  ‘You expect us to believe that when she eats like a bird?’

  ‘Lovely to see you looking so pretty, Yulia,’ Alexei changed the subject.