Kate Furnivall - Under a Blood Red Sky

‘My men will search the gypsy’s house first.’

‘No,’ Sofia whispered. The strange mystical contents that lay therein would condemn the whole village.

Mikhail stepped forward to stand beside Fomenko, eyes narrowed against the falling snow. ‘Look, he was just a gypsy who was good with horses, nothing more; a man who understood their moods and could get a solid day’s work out of them. And now he’s dead. You’ll find nothing in his house except a few pots of stinking grease for softening bridles.’

‘So you knew this Enemy of the People?’ the officer demanded with interest.

Sofia’s heart slid somewhere cold.

But Mikhail was careful. ‘I knew him only as someone who lived in Tivil. We didn’t share a glass of vodka together, if that’s what you mean.’ He nodded at the officer and banged his hands on his arms in a noisy show of the shivers. ‘It’s cold, comrade. The coming storm will trap you here in Tivil if you don’t hurry. Get back to Dagorsk with your men, this business is finished.’

Sofia could feel an uneasy suspension of breath around her and, barely noticeable in the darkening of the light, she moved close and touched the officer’s pale horse on its big shoulder muscle. It bared its teeth but didn’t bite, though the white threads of its tail twitched like serpents. Leave. Just leave. After a long thoughtful moment the officer swung his horse’s head and, hunched against the wind, cantered off through the snow at the head of his troop. The purga swallowed them.

The figures stood motionless in the moment of shock that followed, then Mikhail quickly wrapped one arm round Sofia, the other round Pyotr. ‘We must get Rafik’s body out of the storm.’

But before they could move, Elizaveta spoke out in a voice that was powerful against the rising wind.

‘Listen to us, Sofia.’

Four figures stood in a line, blocking the path into the village. Priest Logvinov, Elizaveta Lishnikova, Pokrovsky and the weeping gypsy girl. The blacksmith had lifted Rafik’s limp body into his arms and Zenia’s hand rested on her father’s dark head.

‘Sofia,’ Elizaveta said, ‘we ask you to take Rafik’s place.’

‘No.’

‘Sofia,’ Pokrovsky said, ‘you are needed.’

You are needed. Rafik’s words.

Sofia recoiled. ‘No.’

A sound, rustling, seemed to brush against her mind. She shook her head sharply. ‘No.’

‘Sofia.’ The priest raised a hand into the snow-laden air between them but carved no cross this time. ‘God will grant you strength. You are the one who can help care for our village. Rafik knew it, he believed in you.’

I have faith in you. His final words to her.

‘Nyet. No.’ She inhaled deeply, ice stinging her lungs. ‘Mikhail, it’s dangerous. Tell them.’

Fomenko was standing to one side, observing them in silence, his eyes intense and curious. But Sofia’s eyes were drawn to the road into Tivil and she felt it pull at her, as powerfully as the moon pulls the tide. Through the snow that was now falling fast, the village drifted into view, the izbas waiting.

Mikhail took her hand in his. ‘My love, it has to be your decision. Yours alone.’

‘I don’t have the strength. Not like Rafik.’

‘We will help you.’

Sofia looked at the circle of people around her. With a rush she knew that the life she’d been pretending she and Mikhail could lead elsewhere was never destined to happen.

‘I’ll be with you,’ Mikhail said, his hand tightening on hers.

The sound of Tivil breathing came to her. She didn’t want it to die, and somehow she sensed that the decision had been made long ago, before she was born. Was there any truth in what Rafik had told her, that she had inherited a special gift as the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter? She didn’t know. She knew only that from him she had started to learn a way of applying her mind, a way of shifting sand. She looked around her in the swirling snow, at these people who believed in her and who cared so passionately for their village, and she felt for the first time a huge sense of belonging. Here was a place that pulled at her heart, a place that was home. And she owed it to Anna. My dear Anna, grow well and strong again. It’s because of you that I am here, with this man at my side. Spasibo.

‘I’ll stay,’ she said simply.

Tivil Spring 1934

The air was crystal clear, and high above Tivil the wispy trail of an aeroplane skimmed across a pale blue sky. Mikhail gazed up at it, shading his eyes.

‘It’s an ANT- 9,’ Pyotr said confidently. ‘The same as the Krokodil.’

‘You’re right,’ Mikhail grinned. ‘You’ll be a pilot yet.’

They were in the graveyard at the back of what was once the church, the grass still fragile with frost where the building’s shadow lay, but the spring sunshine was tempting out the first buds. Sofia was kneeling beside Rafik’s grave. In her hand she held a bunch of podsnezhniki, snowdrops, their delicate heads softly swaying as she placed them in a jar on the grave.

‘Where did you find the flowers so early?’ Mikhail asked.

She smiled up at him. ‘Where do you think?’

‘Beneath the cedar tree.’

‘Of course.’

She and Anna had picked them together. Sofia smiled at the memory – it was there that Anna had shyly whispered the news that she was pregnant.

‘It’s a secret,’ Anna smiled, ‘but I can’t keep it from you. Now that I’m so much better, it’ll be safe.’

‘Have you told your husband yet?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

Anna touched her stomach. ‘We’re naming him Vasily.’

‘Let’s hope it’s a boy then,’ Sofia had laughed.

Now she took the white stone from her pocket and rested it on Rafik’s grave.

‘Why do you always do that?’ Pyotr asked.

He’d grown taller in the winter months, his shoulders suddenly broader and his eyes more thoughtful. Sofia had found herself watching him and wondering.

‘I do it because this stone connects Tivil to Rafik.’

She picked it up. Neither Communism nor the Church had brought peace to Tivil, but this was something different, a strength that seemed to rise from the heart of the earth itself. She looked into the boy’s eyes.

‘Hold the stone,’ she said.

Pyotr didn’t hesitate, as if he’d been waiting a long time for this moment. His hand grasped the stone and immediately his young eyes filled with light in the bright spring morning.

‘Pyotr, before your Papa adopted you, did you have brothers?’

‘Yes, but when I was three,’ his eyes were studying the milky stone, ‘they all died in the typhus epidemic.’

‘Six older brothers? Making you the seventh son.’

‘Yes. How do you know that?’

She didn’t answer his question.

‘Pyotr, would you like to come for walks with me sometimes when it’s dark? And learn to shape the thoughts that form in your mind?’

Pyotr looked to his father. Mikhail gazed at his son with gentle regret and nodded. ‘Take care of my son, Sofia.’

‘I will, I promise.’

Pyotr stood, still fingering the stone. ‘When will we start?’ he asked.

Sofia gazed round at the village that was her home, at the houses so sturdy and yet so fragile in the sunshine.

‘Tonight,’ she murmured. ‘We’ll start tonight.’

Kate Furnivall was raised in Penarth, a small seaside town in Wales. Her mother, whose own childhood was spent in Russia, China and India, discovered at an early age that the world around us is so volatile, that the only things of true value are those inside your head and your heart. These values Kate explores in The Russian Concubine.