‘No, we do not want to let everyone know we are fleeing, do we?’ Ivan said. ‘Leave everything looking normal.’

‘Normal!’ She gave a cracked laugh as the big horse began to pull. It was used to shunting heavy engines and the droshky was feather-light by comparison. ‘How can you say normal? I don’t know what that means anymore. All this hole-and-corner stuff. You’d think we were criminals…’

‘In the eyes of the Soviet, we are.’

They reached the end of the drive and turned south towards Petrovsk. It was only one straggling muddy street, lined with crooked wooden houses, which had thatched roofs and painted decorations around the doors and windows. The local Party headquarters on the square was built of brick, and so was the library and the school which was on the far side of the town. The railway station was only a rough wooden building but it also housed the telegraph and post office. There were a few people about, all known to them, and they called out a greeting as they passed. ‘Good day to you, Ivan Ivanovich,’ they said, laughing at the plodding horse. ‘What have you got there? A sledgehammer to crack a nut?’

‘Andrei Mikhailovich must be taken to school,’ he called back. ‘And Mikhail Mikhailovich needed the carriage to visit Grigori Stefanovich on business.’

‘What’s wrong with their legs?’

‘Nothing. It is snowing, or had you not noticed?’

‘Pshaw, they should walk like the rest of us.’

Ivan did not answer but urged the horse to go faster to take them past the hecklers, but it was used to its own steady pace and ignored him. At the school, he drew up. ‘Am I to go in?’ Andrei asked.

‘No, but we will pretend you have. Get out and run round to the back, then cross the field. I will be waiting the other side.’

‘I never heard such nonsense,’ Tonya said. ‘For goodness’ sake, can’t we take the children where we like without all this fuss?’

‘No, we can’t. It’s the count’s orders. Off you go, Andrei, and don’t stop to speak to anyone.’

Andrei believed every word his father had said and had no doubt they would meet at Tonya’s parents’ house and was unworried. ‘I’m going with him,’ the governess said, as he jumped down. ‘I gave my word I would not let him out of my sight. If I’m stopped I shall say I have a message from Anna Yurievna for the teacher.’

Lydia was frightened and clung to Tonya’s hand. ‘You go on with Ivan Ivanovich,’ Tonya said, gently disengaging herself. ‘I shall only be a minute.’

She hurried after Andrei and Ivan moved on. He didn’t like it, he didn’t like any of it. If it were not for his long service to the count’s family and the fact that the countess had always been good to his wife and children, he would have nothing to do with it. The Reds were getting closer all the time, and if they overran the area, he did not want to be labelled a Tsarist or a White, or any other name used to denote an enemy of the state.

The road wound round the field and passed through a small copse of birch trees. One or two shrivelled leaves still clung to the branches, but most made a grey-brown carpet on a land rapidly turning white. Once hidden from the town Ivan pulled up and before long Tonya and Andrei appeared. They clambered aboard and they were quickly on their way again.

They could hear the rumble of guns in the distance and away to their left a plume of smoke rose above a slight hill. The fighting was coming nearer, might already have reached Grigori Stefanovich’s village which was only about eight versts distant from Petrovsk. He looked at Tonya and inclined his head in the direction of the smoke. ‘Whose house do you think that is?’

‘I don’t know and we had better not wait to find out. You know the count’s orders as well as I do. Tickle that horse into a trot, for goodness’ sake.’

He did his best and the horse lumbered on, dragging the droshky after it as if it were trying to free itself from a troublesome fly. The country hereabouts had once produced good grain, wheat, barley and oats, but the war against Germany had put an end to farming; the men had all been away fighting and the women who were left could not work the fields in the same way. When the war ended, the occupying Germans had left and their own men drifted back, but then came the Revolution and everything was confused and no one knew what they were supposed to be doing. Today, the rolling fields were covered in snow, and though the outline of the road was still just visible, a few more hours of bad weather and that, too, would disappear under a blanket of white.

‘We should have harnessed the troika,’ Tonya told Ivan.

‘How could you, with only one horse?’ Troikas, as a rule, were pulled by three horses but they could be harnessed with only two. ‘Anyway, we are going south. If the snow turns to rain what good would a sleigh be?’

‘Perhaps Papa and Mama will catch us up,’ Andrei said. ‘They will surely be going faster than this.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘When are we going to have our picnic?’

‘Not yet,’ Tonya said. ‘Later we will find a shelter.’

‘There is a wood ahead of us,’ Andrei pointed out. ‘There might be a woodman’s hut.’

The road took them among the trees which, burdened by fresh snow, made the way dark as night. Most of the trees were conifers, but there were a few leafless deciduous trees. The last few berries which clung to them – orange rowanberries, wine-coloured elderberries, clusters of viburnum, some whitish, some purple – were being attacked by finches. Except for the creaking of the droshky the softly falling snow deadened all sound. Lydia shivered. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘It’s like being shut in the cellar. I don’t want to stop here to have our picnic, even if we do find a hut.’

‘Be quiet and listen!’ Ivan said.

Lydia stopped speaking as the sound of galloping horses came to them from among the trees. Ivan did not wait to see who rode them, but whipped up their own animal into a lumbering gallop. The droshky swayed from side to side and they hung on grimly. Half a dozen horsemen burst from the trees onto the road behind them and one shouted for them to halt. Ivan ignored them. Tonya sat forward with her arms about Lydia, as gunshots spattered round them. ‘You had better stop, Ivan Ivanovich,’ she cried. ‘Before they kill us all.’

His answer was to go faster. The horsemen, who seemed to think chasing them was a great joke, continued to fire at the ground around them, laughing and shouting and not bothering to catch them up, which they could easily have done. Before anyone could stop him, Andrei had grabbed the shotgun and stood up in the swaying carriage to return the fire. It was the worst thing he could have done. The chase stopped being a joke, and although Tonya reached up and tried to pull the boy down, it was too late; they were subjected to a hail of bullets, this time not aimed to miss.

Andrei and Tonya both fell backwards and landed awkwardly on Lydia who screamed and kept on screaming, as Andrei’s blood spattered onto her face; she could even taste it on her lips. So much blood, sticky and black in the darkness of the forest, soaking her coat. Andrei did not speak, was incapable of speech. Tonya was groaning. Was some of the blood hers? Ivan looked back once and then urged the horses on, but the horsemen galloped up and surrounded them, forcing them to stop.

‘Why didn’t you stop when we shouted?’ one of them asked, riding close to the carriage and peering inside. ‘Who was it fired at us?’

‘The boy,’ Ivan said. ‘He did not understand. He is only a child. He thought he was defending his sister.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Get down and look, for God’s sake, and stop that child screaming. You’ll have the whole army down on our heads.’ Which army he did not specify.

‘She is frightened.’ Ivan clambered down awkwardly, knowing that the men’s guns were trained on him. He reached across and pulled Tonya off Lydia. Unable to sit up, the nurse slid to the floor. ‘Be quiet, little one,’ he told Lydia. ‘You will only make the men angry if you scream.’

Her screams became frightened sobs, which she tried valiantly to hold back, but the sight of Andrei laying across her lap with his head thrown back and his eyes wide and staring was enough to set her off again. Her coat had fallen open and the blood was staining her white dress, soaking through to the petticoat, the petticoat containing the Kirilov diamond. She remembered her mother saying bad men might try and take it from her and she supposed that was who they were. Ivan lifted Andrei out and held him out in his arms, as if to show him to the horsemen, none of whom had dismounted. ‘He is dead.’ Ivan’s voice was toneless.

‘And the other? Who is she?’

He was about to say their governess when he realised that admitting the children had a governess was not a good idea; it branded them as aristocrats. ‘A friend of the family. They were going to stay with her in Perekop while their parents went to Kiev. They have been summoned to appear at some enquiry or other. I don’t know the details.’ The sight of Andrei, brave, foolish Andrei, had brought him near to tears himself and he could only mutter these untruths. ‘Let me take them on, comrades. We are no danger to you. We have nothing you want. The boy did not mean any harm and he didn’t hit anyone.’

The leader at last dismounted and came to look at Andrei, who was most certainly dead of a head wound. It had been a superb shot considering the smallness of the target and the fact that the droshky was travelling in a far from straight line; more of an accident than deliberate, if he were honest. ‘You should have stopped him.’