The Ice Swan by J’nell Ciesielski

Panic rang in Svetlana’s ears, drowning out the pain in her leg. She willed her expression to remain impenetrable as she stared at Alexander Nevsky Cathedral with its golden cupolas shining in the brilliant and indomitable morning sun. How did he know? They’d been so careful to hide here.

“You are mistaken. I do not know this place.”

“Not at all? Mayhap it looks different in daylight.”

She never should have allowed this man to walk with them. “I have no interest in a church.”

“Not even for moonlight strolls?” He leaned closer, the scent of lye soap and cotton heavy on him. “After having a bottle hurled at you by an obnoxious Frenchwoman. A cheap bottle of red wine, I might add.”

With that her mask crashed to the ground. “You are the man.”

Last night rushed back in hideous remembrance. Desperate, she’d gone to seek new sanctuary for her family as their presence grew tedious to the other Russian émigrés taking refuge in the church cellar. Mama’s presence in particular. She complained to all that the conditions were unacceptable for a noblewoman. That horrible Frenchwoman didn’t even allow Svetlana time to offer the diamond brooch in exchange for renting a room before the bottle came at her head. Memories of fleeing Petrograd and all the shouting voices had come flooding back.

Then a voice had called out from the dark. His voice. And she’d fled. “Will you report me for remaining out after curfew?”

“No. I only wanted to make sure you were all right. That was a nasty fall.”

She waited for the trick. Her family had existed within the false sense of safety for months as they escaped the madness choking Russia behind them, but always ready for the trap to spring. Their troubles would not allow them to leave so easily. This doctor may not wear a red armband, but it did not sanctify him from a new sort of traitor that would drag them back to a Petrograd firing squad. And yet she found nothing treasonous in his eyes. Only kindness and, dare she imagine, understanding.

Nothing seemed to slip by him. She’d felt his quiet assessment at the hospital, not in a manner calculating profit and risk. More in a way that peered past the apparent to find the heart of the matter hidden beneath the veneer. He did it again now with that golden-green gaze—colors that reminded her of an autumn sun setting over the Crimean Mountains.

It would be insulting to both of their intelligence to continue the farce.

“Very well.”

Skirting around the main entrance, meant only for believers to enter the holy place, Svetlana circled around to the back of the church where her kind entered through the cellar. The heavy door groaned under protest as she opened it. A draft of cool stone, mold, and compacted bodies drifted up, evoking a loathing visceral enough to make her spit. Here they lived like rats.

With an agility belying her age, Mrs. Varjensky waddled down the creaky steps and disappeared into the dimness. Svetlana counted the steps with hesitation as the pain in her leg throbbed. She’d danced en pointe with a broken toe before. She could manage this. Taking the first step, her injured leg buckled. She grabbed for the handrail. A strong arm anchored around her waist before her fingertips brushed the wood.

Embarrassed at her loss of composure, she stiffened and pulled away. “Thank you.”

“All in a day’s work. Women are always falling for me. I’m quite charming that way.” Wynn grinned to reveal a full show of white teeth.

Svetlana hesitated, considering the meaning of this Englishman’s strangely phrased words. “You are funny again.”

He winced. “Only to myself it seems. Again.”

“You are easily amused.”

“And you are not.”

“Nothing is amusing in Russia. Not anymore.” She limped down the remaining steps, hating the sudden weakness in her trained body. His hand never left the small of her back. By the time she reached the floor, a sheen of sweat dotted her brow and fires of pain danced up her leg. How would she ever perform on stage again if a flight of stairs defeated her?

She pulled away from the doctor’s touch and straightened herself. “Say nothing. They are wary of strangers.”

His brow furrowed. “Who are they?”

With the unavoidable at hand, Svetlana guided him through another door and into the cellar proper stuffed to the brim with Russian émigrés. It was a small space no bigger than her family’s dining room back in their Petrograd home, the Blue Palace. A narrow path wound through the maze of blankets and luggage spread across the cold stone floor. Clothes cleaned as best they could from the two wash buckets were strung over rope anchored from wall to wall. Children dressed in the worn peasant clothing of the countryside huddled close to their mothers and fathers, their Russian dialects spread as wide as the plains to the Altai Mountains. The Reds had covered much ground in displacing their people.

Conversations hushed and questioning glances followed as she guided Wynn through the confusion to the back rows where crass voices melted into elegant French, the language of Russia’s upper class. Here blankets had been hung as dividers for privileged privacy. Narrow windows cut high in the back wall beckoned in a timid light that barely scratched the peasant rows. The blanket wall in the back corner rustled and out rushed her mother and sister with identical expressions of concern.

“Svetka! Here you are at last. What has happened to take so long?” Her mother stumbled to a halt at the sight of Wynn, as he’d so informally introduced himself back at the hospital. “Who is this man?”

While her mother spoke in their customary French, Svetlana kept to English for the courtesy of their guest. “Allow me to present Doctor MacCallan of the English hospital here in Paris.” Drawing her shawl close to hide the exerted beating of her heart from the painful walk, she gestured to her mother. “My mother, Ana Dalsky, and my sister, Marina.”

Mama’s mouth twisted in her way of displeasure. “Her Serenity the Princess Ana Andreevna Dalsky.” She held out her hand to be kissed as if they were standing once more in St. George’s Hall in the Winter Palace.

“Mama! We cannot be so blatant about our titles in this unfamiliar place,” Svetlana said in French. It was rude to cut their guest so obviously from the conversation, but it was safer to trust no one, hunted as they were simply for being nobility. The old life was gone and clinging to it—as desperately as she wanted to—was a death sentence, in soul and body. Mama could never make things easier when it went against her will.

“This man is of little consequence and absorbed in a war little to do with our situation. I will not lessen myself, nor should you.” Mama waggled her waiting fingers, once glittering with rings but now bare, the rings having been sold for scraps of food on their escape.

With only the slightest show of surprise, Wynn bent over Mama’s fingers as any gentleman of standing was required. “A pleasure, Your Serenity.”

Other nobles of ranking—counts, barons, and countesses—peeked around the corners of their blanket walls. Scowls creasing their wane faces, they whispered to one another as Mama smiled in triumph. Once upon a time a visiting physician was nothing to draw jealousy, but here, to host a visitor of any kind was an occasion harkening back to the privileges they all once possessed and grappled to grasp once again.

“Won’t you come in?” With a change back to English, Mama swept into their chamber that was little more than three dividing blankets and a stone wall.

“I’ll see Mrs. Varjensky settled first. She needs to rest.” Smiling in that English manner of politeness, he retraced their steps, seeming not the least bit affected by the stares and scowls.

Mama rounded on Svetlana as soon as she hobbled into their cordoned-off space. “Have you taken complete leave of your senses? That man does not belong here.”

Svetlana kept her voice low. “Then why did you receive him so happily?”

“I may have lost my home, my clothes, and my jewels, but I have not forgotten the simple manners of receiving a visitor no matter how unexpected or unwelcome he is. Good breeding would not allow me to. Good breeding should have taught you not to go to such a hospital and drag back the help.”

Marina helped Svetlana to a bundle of scratchy blankets serving as their shared sleeping pallet. “Mama, Svetka was injured. She had no choice but to go.” A younger version of their mother with dark blond hair and a petite frame that was quickly filling out with her fourteen years, Marina was always the one to seek peace.

“She had a choice not to bring him here. He’ll report us. We’ll be cast out and then where will we go?” Clutching the gold cross dangling from her neck, Mama draped herself across the pallet and turned her face away with a soft sob.

Ignoring the theatrics, Marina knelt next to Svetlana and took her hands. New callouses had developed on her tender palms from carrying in buckets of water each morning. A task once suited to a servant, but Marina never complained.

“Are you all right?”

Svetlana stretched out her leg, flexing and curling her toes. One by one the cramps eased from the tightened muscles. “Yes. He pulled the piece from my knee and bandaged it before dressing Mrs. Varjensky’s hand.”

“Do you think we’re in trouble for staying here? Will he tell the authorities who we are? I tire of running.”

Svetlana smoothed the hair from her sister’s thinning face. Their once impeccably tailored clothes were fitting a bit looser these days. She tried to keep her family fed as best she could, but food was scarce all over Paris. Not to mention shelter. Pain cut into her leg, scuttling guilt across her conscience. If her family were safe enough in this refuge cellar, she never would have gone off last night, and none of the transpiring events would have happened. That insistent man could have stayed at his hospital sharpening scalpels and not be here intruding on their peace of mind.

None of this could she tell Mama or Marina and so she summed a serene smile. “There is nothing to worry yourself about, kotyonok. We are safe.”

“I wish Papa and Nicky were here.”

“They will join us soon enough or send for us when they’ve defeated the revolutionaries. In the meantime we will make ourselves as discrete as possible.” Svetlana stretched out her other leg, easing the strain from having to put all her weight on one side. She had not been in this amount of pain since she twisted her ankle on a difficult jeté landing during rehearsal for La Sylphide. It was the first summer she had danced before the tsar and the tsarina. The White Nights of Russia’s summer had cast a golden glow across the stage as dozens of gossamer ballerina wings flapped in rhythm. If she could have but one more carefree summer such as that— She pushed the longing away. There was no point in dwelling on impossibilities when survival demanded her every minute.

“The Reds will not find us here. Not this far from Russia, will they?” Fear quaked in Marina’s eyes. Terror of the Reds was a fear they had never known until a year ago when the revolutions began. They had come to live with the anxiety ever since. God willing, the White Army would win back the throne for the tsar and they could all return home.

“Papa and Nicky will not allow them. You’ll see.”

“Hello? May I come in?” Wynn stood on the other side of the blanket serving as their door.

Like a spring, Mama bounced up from her prostrate position dry eyed and pink cheeked. She scooted to the edge of the pallet and arranged her skirts into regal folds before clasping her hands in her lap. “Enter.”

Wynn took a single, polite step into the chamber, but it was enough to take up all remaining space. He was tall, taller than Papa, who was considered the tallest of the tsar’s guards, and could easily brush the ceiling if he were to push to his toes. A thick, broad chest that foretold of well-shaped muscles beneath his clothes. Unlike most lanky physicians she’d seen before. His hair that had appeared a dark blond in the morning light now shone light brown; the long locks on top were parted to the side and cut much shorter around his ears.

He was a man at ease with himself and the world and his place in it. Would Svetlana ever feel that way again or would the revolutionaries strip away that hope as well?

“Doctor, how might we thank you for your services?” Mama reached for her handbag, which contained a few coins they’d managed to trade an heirloom brooch for upon arriving in France.

Wynn held up his hand. “As I told your daughter, there is no charge in wartime.”

For the first time, Mama dared to relax her face into what others might be fooled into considering as a friendly look. “Are all physicians as noble as you?”

“I wouldn’t call it noble, ma’am, but we do what we can for those in need.”

Mama glanced away and touched the bottom slanted bar of her Orthodox cross. “How these times make us all suffer. Some more than others.”

“You’re right about that, but you’ll never hear those Tommies complaining. I think they’re all out for the medal of suffering in silence.”

Mama’s lips pursed at his not taking her pitying bait. “Yes, well, we have seen a great deal of suffering on our travel here.”

“Do you plan to remain in Paris or travel on to a final destination?”

“Any final destination for a Russian is in Russia, though the circumstances do not allow for it at present. Here we shall stay with nothing but our dignity until such a time as we may return.”

“I believe we all feel that way about going home.” The easy light in his eyes flickered.

It was the slightest break in an illusion of well-being that Svetlana felt all too keenly. She didn’t want to believe that of him. Couldn’t allow herself to believe it. No one was to be trusted. Not even kind doctors who pulled glass from her leg.

Svetlana shifted on the hard floor. “Is Mrs. Varjensky comfortable?”

Wynn nodded, looking once more the confident doctor. “She’s resting now, as you should be doing. Keep your leg elevated and only put weight on it if you must. A bit of valerian root or white willow bark in scandal water should help relieve any pain for the both of you. Tomorrow I’ll try to get you proper medicines.”

“What is this scandalous water?”

“Tea. Because ladies often use it as social lubricant for gossip.”

Svetlana’s gaze dropped to the wrapped package in his hand. “What do you have there?”

“Pastry of some sort.” Unwrapping the muslin, he held up a ring of baked dough with cheese in the center. “Mrs. Varjensky insisted.”

“Vatrushka.”

“Vatrushka.” His pronunciation was terrible, but it didn’t keep him from grinning. A habit he so easily allowed. “Breakfast. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long night and my next round of duties begins in eight hours. I’ll bring the medicines after my shift.”

The panic from earlier came swooping back. They didn’t need him returning and drawing attention. “We can make do without and will trouble you no further.”

“As my patient it’s your prerogative to trouble me. Let’s me know I’m still needed.”

“But the soldiers—”

“I should warn you now that I’ve perfected the art of ignoring patients’ gallant notions of martyrdom. Part of a physician’s training.” He sketched a short bow and backed out of the chamber. “Ladies, I bid you all a pleasant morning and remainder of the day.”

Svetlana struggled to her feet in a last desperate attempt. Her leg cramped in protest. “Marina can collect the medicine instead of you coming so far to deliver it.”

Wynn stuck his head back in and cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re going to be a difficult one, aren’t you? Rest.” With a quick flash of his eye, he disappeared.

Mama gasped. “That man winked at you.”

“No, a mere twitch,” Svetlana said. It was very much a wink, but admitting so brought no favors.

“He could be dangerous.”

“As dangerous as using titles in front of him?”

Huffing, Mama surged to her dainty feet. The fraying hem of her once fashionable skirt swished around her ankles. “Whatever he is, he’s proven the English have nothing of court protocol. Mrs. Dalsky. As if I would answer to such a commoner’s name. Blessed be he’s a simple physician and not expected to circulate within higher society.”

“I think he’s nice,” Marina said, patting Svetlana’s hand. “He took care of you. And Mrs. Varjensky.”

He did. When no one else would.

Mama sniffed and pulled at a loose thread from her shawl. “Hmph. Another commoner. I don’t know why you insisted on bringing her.”

“Her sons were killed in the February Revolution last year and her husband died while they were escaping from the Bolsheviks,” Svetlana said, ignoring the sting that came with her mother’s criticism of her judgment. It came more often than not at Svetlana’s expense. “She has no one left. We couldn’t leave her in that miserable church with people crawling on top of one another.”

While making their way through Belgium they had heard of a church on the outskirts of Paris that was taking in White émigrés, but upon arrival there had only been space enough in the basement for them to sit back to back in hopes of sleeping. Mama had demanded—loudly—that serene princesses of relation to the tsar himself deserved an entire corner to themselves. It hadn’t taken long for threats to come. Svetlana had sneaked out her family and Mrs. Varjensky in the middle of the night and led them into the city only to find themselves beneath the floor of another church.

“How is your leg?” Mama’s expression softened, but the sunlight streaming through the window was not kind to the lines on her face. Her skin was soft and smooth as a young girl’s in Petrograd, but the passing months had left their wearisome marks.

“It will heal.”

“God give you strength. Rest now.”

Svetlana took Marina’s offered hand and lowered herself once more to the pallet. Marina folded her shawl and propped it under Svetlana’s ankle. “I’ll see if I can find something to make the tea for you and Mrs. Varjensky. Try to close your eyes.”

Every fiber in Svetlana’s body cried out for rest the way it did after a long day of dancing. But unlike the familiarity of a ballet barre to push her onward, nothing of comfort was to be found here. Nothing but unrest and danger. They could stay no longer.