The Girl Who Fought Napoleon: A Novel of the Russian Empire (3 page)

I began to rub my pustules with my mittened hands.

“No, no, little one. You mustn’t scratch them,” said the woman. I looked up at her, barely able to focus through my blurring tears. She lifted me up from the pillow, giving me a sip of water from a clay cup.

“I, too, know stories of horses. Magic horses,” she said. It was then I realized that the old woman could speak Russian better than she let on.

“And Lithuanian tales of spirits. Our respect for the magic of water that harbors the spirits of the drowned.” I started and drew back from the cup she held out for me to drink. “No, little one. Do not be afraid of the spirits. Live amongst them peacefully and rejoice. They surround us, always.”

I grew so feverish, I could not see her face, nor that of Astakhov when he returned from paying his respects to the dead man. I heard only voices and fluttering blankets.

Astakhov stood over me, tears sliding down his face. “The pustules . . .” he said. “They are growing closer and closer together.”

I heard her voice speak again in very bad Russian. She was addressing Astakhov.

“Do not . . . make water in your eyes, Corporal. If she goes, she goes with the goddess Saul
ė
, pulled by the horse gods.”

“I cannot bear to lose her,” he said, his voice thick. “How would I tell the captain, her father. He loves her like a . . . son.”

My eyelids fluttered as I sank down deeper into the abyss.
A son!
I clawed the air trying to resurface.

“Ah! That is the matter!” said the Lithuanian woman. “He loves her as a son. Not as the daughter she is? Where is her mother?”

“Her mother cannot risk contagion. She has three young children.”

The old woman made a snorting sound, like a rooting pig. I felt her dry hand on my forehead, smoothing back my wet hair.

“Stay with us, little Nadezhda,” she whispered in my ear. “Stay and watch the twin horse spirits carry the goddess Saul
ė
’s chariot across the sky from horizon to horizon. See their white coats and bright manes. She will reward them with golden hay when they reach their destination.”

The pustules had grown dimpled in the center. Astakhov measured the distance between each with width of his little fingernail. He knew if they grew and spread into one another, I would surely die. The old woman shook her head and left us.

She returned with a whitened skull in her hands.

“
Arklys
,” she said. “Horse. Magic.”

Astakhov shook his head, staring at the horse skull. “Madness,” he muttered.

The babushka placed the skull beside my bed. “
Arklys
help little Nadezhda.”

The old woman closed the shutters. She smothered the fire with dried herbs and a wet blanket, letting the fire smolder, and creating a dense smoke. She knelt and prayed in front of the smoking heap. She spoke a strange language I could not understand.

Astakhov did not protest. We were in her home, condemning it with my disease. Who was he to refuse her help, her incantations to cure me?

She spoke again in Russian. Her prayers were to the twin gods of horses, to intervene with the great goddess.

“We are all twins by nature. We are evil and good. We are man and woman. You must follow the one who truly captures your heart.”

In my delirium I dreamt of the twin horses, galloping across the heavens. I became one, tossing my golden mane into the stars as I reared. I caught a glimpse of the goddess behind me, giving me free rein.

And smiling.

Chapter 4

Sarapul, Russia

August 1790

I recovered from smallpox, though two of the soldiers in the Lithuanian house did not.

Soon, my mother was pregnant again and my father realized he could not continue in the cavalry as a family man. When I was seven years old, he retired from the cavalry and was given a job as a civil servant in Sarapul, along the Kama River, west of the Ural Mountains. It was a harsh place to live, the gateway to Siberia. The town survived on the yellow sturgeon that were abundant in the river—in the local Chuvash language,
Sara
meant “money” and
pul
meant “fish.” But the winters were long and hard, so cold and severe that the townspeople would mix their ground wheat with acorns or the bark of fir trees to make their flour last till spring.

And with that move there was an abrupt end to my freedom and my tutelage with the cavalry orderly Astakhov. We rolled away in a wagon, leaving behind the cavalry life. Astakhov stood outside the army camp, waving his hand and weeping like a child until our wagon had disappeared from sight.

I would never forget him, or my childhood cavalry days.

My mother was determined to introduce me to domestic life. She made me crochet lace. Can you imagine? I made a tangled mess of the yarn, cursing the crochet hooks. I hated my stiff dresses and endless house chores, and spurned all attempts my mother made to teach me etiquette and the gentle manners of a lady.

My mother, exasperated, locked me in the house, forbidding me to set foot outside. She would tame my wild spirit, she declared.

“Nadezhda! Who will ever marry you? You are swarthy, astonishingly ugly—you look like a goblin. The least you can learn is sewing and housekeeping, to make a man a good wife.”

For a young girl brought up on the back of a cavalry horse, there could have been no greater torture. I yearned for the warm smell of horse, the spicy fir trees, and fresh air of the cavalry march.

My mother kept me out of the sun, trying to pale my weather-beaten skin. Smallpox had left my complexion scarred, the skin thickened with scar tissue. She told me over and over that I was ugly, that I did not even look like a girl. That I must work at making myself more appealing. Becoming a lady, performing domestic duties skillfully would win me a husband.

Simultaneously she bemoaned her station in life as a woman. She suspected my father of philandering.

“A woman must be born, live, and die in slavery. Eternal bondage!” my mother wailed. “Because I grow old, he abandons me for firmer flesh!”

She threw her looking glass at the wall, shattering it. “There is no creature more unhappy, more worthless, or more contemptible.”

I watched her rage, snapping like a wild dog at her fetters. She convinced me that, indeed, a woman is destined to a life of repression, a hopeless destiny.

It was at that moment that I resolved, even if it cost me my life, to escape the curse that seemed to be the fate of all women.

Then Alcides came into my life.

Chapter 5

Winter Palace, St. Petersburg

January 1790

Grand Duke Paul and his son Alexander left the Winter Palace in a troika covered in bearskins, the January wind so cold it snatched their breath away, leaving them gasping. They traveled for two days, stopping in the empress’s transit palaces, which were built a day’s travel apart so the royal family would never lack proper accommodations while traveling to and fro between residences.

On the third day, the final stage of the trip stretched into the late afternoon. Winter night comes early in Russia, and by four in the afternoon it was already dark. His father put his arm around Alexander’s shoulders, pulling him deeper under the furs to protect his skin and tender lungs.

“It is brutally cold,” Paul said. “You do not want chilblains. And you will need your lungs strong for war, my son.”

Alexander popped his head up from the coverings. He pressed his mittens to his face to block the wind.

“Oh, but Father! I want to see everything. I want to see the torches of Gatchina! Our home, yes, Father?”

His father gave him a rare smile, pulling his son close.

Gatchina was Paul’s world and his joy. The grand duke despised the Winter Palace, where his father, Peter III, had been murdered by the Imperial Guards of his own wife, Empress Catherine. Haunted by that bitter memory, the Winter Palace reminded Paul of a lonely childhood with a mother who ignored him, then later came to despise him.

Now the grand duke squeezed his son to his breast, kissing the top of his head. “
Horosho
,
Alexander. Good. Gatchina is our sanctuary. Do not forget you are my son, no matter what happens in the future.”

Alexander felt the warmth of his father’s body, impregnated with the scents of cologne, leather, and cognac. The tsarevitch breathed in both manly warmth and piney cold of the forests, an intoxicating infusion, the aroma of Russia.

“What does
sanctuary
mean, Father?”

Paul heaved a great breath into the winter night, enveloping him and his son in a heavy mist.

“A place where you won’t be murdered in your nightshirt, son.”

Chapter 6

Sarapul, Russia

May 1795

When I was twelve, my father rode into our gated compound one evening on a black Circassian stallion. The young horse snorted and leapt, the muscle in his neck shining in the flickering lights of the stable master’s torch.

“This wretched beast!” shouted my father.

I ran to my papa, embracing him. “Is he mine, Papa?” I said, stretching my hand out toward the stallion.

“No, Nadya. You stay away from this one. He is a brute. He could slice your head open with his hoofs. He bit me as I put on the bridle, the bastard!”

“Why did you buy him then?” asked my mother, coming out of the house. Her voice was shrill and agitated. A maid wrapped a shawl around her shoulders. My mother would not walk a step further from the front door. She hated horses.

“This beautiful stallion? He is a gift. A gift from Astakhov, my old orderly. He is stationed now in the Caucasus Mountains. No horse is more hardy or able on rocky terrain.”

“Astakhov!” I said. “Then surely he is a gift for me.”

My father squeezed me tight in his arms.

“Astakhov sends his loving regards to you, Nadezhda. He loves you as his own daughter. But this horse is untamable. I am not sure he is such a fine present after all.”

I stared at the stallion, extending my hand. He backed away, snorting. His nostrils quivered as he drew in my scent.

“Nadezhda! Enough of that!” called out my mother. “Come into the house this minute!”

Since our cavalry days, my mother would not allow me to even walk down to my father’s stables. I turned my back on her, approaching the horse.

“What is his name, Father?” I said. The horse took a step toward me, still sucking in my scent.

“Alcides,” he said. “The birth name of Heracles.”

“Alcides the all-powerful,” I whispered, the horse’s warm breath on my outstretched hand. “The strongest of all mortals!”

“Nadezhda! At once!” cried my mother.

My father watched me drop my hand and turn away. He nodded for the stableman to take Alcides but stood for a long time rubbing his chin before he followed us in.

I think he knew already I was in love with this new horse.

I waited until I heard my parents’ bedroom door shut before I crept from my room to the kitchen. I had only a candlestick with a brass handle crooked around my finger. As quietly as I could, I rummaged for a loaf of white bread. I cut a few ragged slices and reached into the cupboard for the sugar bowl and sprinkled the bread until it glistened with sweetness in the candlelight.

Sheltering the guttering flame from the drafts, I slipped silently into the night.

The moon cast shadows on the gardens. The birch trees loomed like white giants, their black shadows stretched before me. I could hear the snorting of the horses, the restless commotion as they sensed the new horse stabled among them.

Alcides kicked the stall partition that separated him from my father’s gray gelding.

“Easy!” I said to him. “Easy, Alcides!”

The stallion leapt back at the sound of my voice and the flame of the candle. He snorted from the corner of his stall.

“Come here, boy,” I said, putting the candle down carefully on the stone floor. I stretched out my hand with the sugar-coated bread.

“Here! Look what I brought you, my friend.”

The gelding in the stall next to him stuck his nose through the bars. He was greedy and smelled the sweetness of the treat. He made a low nicker, his lips probing.

Alcides was less sure. He flattened his ears at the searching lips of the gelding, though I kept the bread just out of his reach.

“Come, now, Alcides. My mother would beat me for stealing our sugar. Come, you take a risk for me now.”

I do not know how long I stood there, though I had to tighten my wrap in the drafty cold of the stables. My teeth chattered and I stamped my feet to keep warm. But eventually Alcides took a few steps toward me, his hooves rustling the straw.

He took the sugared bread from my outstretched palm, nibbling it as gently as a rabbit. At last he took the whole slice in his teeth, shaking it up and down.

“No! You will spill off all the sugar!” I protested. I reached up and pressed the slice into his mouth. He did not draw back.

After that first night, Alcides would nicker and paw the ground when he heard my approaching steps, knowing it was me who brought his evening snack.

And the maid complained there was never enough sugar to make the weekly cakes. Lucky for me she blamed it on the house spirit—for every Russian household had one—the mischievous
domovoy
.

“It is his doing!” she proclaimed.

I said a silent prayer for our Russian superstitions and left little pancakes on the windowsill for our
domovoy
as a thank-you.