Winter Garden

Winter Garden Page 34

She does as they have planned: she walks her bike down the path, trying to look calm, as if this is an ordinary early evening stroll through a place where peasants rarely go. But her pulse is racing and her nerve endings feel electrified.

And then he is there, standing beside a lime tree, smiling at her.

She misses a step and stumbles, hitting her bike. He is beside her in an instant, holding her arm.

“This way,” he says, leading her to a spot deep in the trees, where she sees he has laid out a blanket and a basket.

At first they sit cross-legged on the warm plaid wool, their shoulders touching. Through the green bower, she can see sunlight dappling the water and gilding a marble statue. Soon, she knows, the paths will be full of lords and ladies and lovers eager to walk outside in the warm light of a June night.

“What have you been doing since . . . I last saw you?” she asks, not daring to look at him. He has been in her heart for so long it is as if she knows him already, but she doesn’t. She does not know what to say or how to say it, and suddenly she is afraid that there is a wrong way to move forward, a mistake that once made cannot be undone.

“I am at the cleric’s college, studying to be a poet.”

“But you are a prince. And poetry is forbidden.”

“Do not be afraid, Vera. I am not like your father. I am careful.”

“He said the same thing to my mother.”

“Look at me,” Sasha says quietly, and Vera turns to him.

It is a kiss that, once begun, never really ends. Interrupted, yes. Paused, certainly. But from that very moment onward, Vera sees the whole of her life as only a breath away from kissing him again. On that night in the park, they begin the delicate task of binding their souls together, creating a whole comprising their separate halves.

Vera tells him everything there is to know about her and listens rapturously to his own life story—how it was to be born in the northern wilds and left in an orphanage and found later by his royal parents. His tale of deprivation and loneliness makes her hold him more tightly and kiss him more desperately and promise to love him forever.

At this, he turns a little, until he is lying alongside her, their faces close. “I will love you that long, Vera,” he says.

After that there is nothing more to be said.

They walk hand in hand through the pale purple glow of early morning. The alabaster statues look pink in the light. Out in the city, they are among people again, strangers who feel like friends on this white night when the wind blowing up from the river rustles through the leaves. Northern lights dance across the sky in impossible hues.

At the end of the bridge, beneath the streetlamp, they pause and look at each other.

“Come tomorrow night. For dinner,” she says. “I want you to meet my family.”

“What if they do not like me?”

There is no cracking in his voice, no physical betrayal of his emotions, but Vera sees his heart as clearly as if it were beating in the pale white cup of her hands. She hears in him the pain of a boy who’d been abandoned and claimed so late that damage was done. “They will love you, Sasha,” she says, feeling for once as if she is the older of the two. “Trust me.”

“Give me one more day,” he says. “Do not tell anyone about us. Please.”

“But I love you.”

“One more day,” he says again.

She supposes it is little enough to agree to, although he is being foolish. And yet, she smiles at the thought of another magical night like this, where there is nothing but the two of them. She can certainly feign illness one more time.

“I’ll meet you tomorrow at one o’clock. But do not come inside the library. I need my job.”

“I’ll be waiting on the bridge over the castle moat. I want to show you something special.”

Vera lets go of him at last and walks across the street, with her bike clattering along beside her. Heaving it up the stairs, she tries to be quiet as she goes up to the second floor and opens the door. The old hinges squeak; the bike rattles.

The first thing she notices is the smell of smoke. Then she sees her mother, sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette. An over-flowing ashtray is near her elbow.

“Mama!” Vera cries. The bicycle clangs into the wall.

“Hush,” her mother says sharply, glancing over at the bed where Grandmother lies snoring.

Vera puts the bicycle away and moves toward the table. There are no lights on, but a pale glow illuminates the window anyway, giving every hard surface in the room a softer edge; this is especially true of her mother’s face, which is clamped tight with anger. “And where are your vegetables from the garden?”

“Oh. I hit a bench with my bike and fell into the street. Everything was lost.” As the lie spills out, she grabs on to it. “And I was hurt. Oh, my side is killing me. That is why I am so late. I had to walk all the way home.”

Her mother looks at her without smiling. “Seventeen is very young, Vera. You are not so ready for life . . . and love . . . as you believe. And these are dangerous times.”

“You were seventeen when you fell in love with Papa.”

“Yes,” her mother says, sighing. It is a sound of defeat, as if she already knows everything that has happened.

“You would do it again, wouldn’t you? Love Papa, I mean.”

Her mother flinches at that word—love.

“No,” her mother says softly. “I would not love him again, not a poet who cared more for his precious words than his family’s safety. Not if I had known how it would feel to live with a broken heart.” She puts out her cigarette. “No. That is my answer.”

“But—”

“I know you don’t understand,” her mother says, turning away. “I hope you never do. Now come to bed, Vera. Allow me to pretend you are still my innocent girl.”

“I am,” Vera protests.

Her mother looks at her one last time and says, “Not for long, though, I think. For you want to be in love.”

“You make it sound as if falling in love is like catching some disease.”

Her mother says nothing, just climbs into the narrow bed with Olga, who makes a snoring sound and flings an arm across her.

Vera wants to ask more questions, explain how she feels, but she sees that her mother isn’t interested. Is this the reason Sasha asked for one more day? Did he know that Mama would resist?

She brushes her teeth and dresses for bed, plaiting her long hair. Climbing in next to her mother, she eases close, finds warmth in her mother’s arms.

“Be careful,” her mother whispers into Vera’s ear. “And do not lie to me again.”

Fifteen

The next morning, Vera wakes early enough to wash her hair in the kitchen sink and painstakingly brushes it dry. “Where are you going?” Olga says sleepily from the bed. Vera presses a finger to her lips and makes a shushing sound. Her mother angles up on one elbow in the bed. “There is no need to shush your sister, Veronika. I can smell the rosewater you used in your hair.”

Vera considers lying to her mother, perhaps saying that someone important is expected in the library today, but in the end she simply says nothing.

Her mother throws back the flimsy covers and gets out of the narrow bed. She and Olga peel sideways like synchronized swimmers and stand together in their ragged white nightgowns.

“Bring your young man here on Sunday,” Mama says. “Your grandmother will be out.”

Vera throws her arms around her and hugs her tightly. Then as they have done each day for more than a year, the three of them eat breakfast and then leave together.

When Mama turns toward the warehouse and walks away, Olga sidles up to Vera. “Tell me.”

Vera links arms with her sister. “It is Prince Aleksandr. Sasha. He has been waiting for me to grow up and now that I have, he is in love with me.”

“The prince,” Olga says in awe.

“I am seeing him again tonight. So tell Mama I am fine and I will be home when I can. I don’t want her to worry.”

“She’ll be mad.”

“I know,” Vera says. “But what can I do? I love him, Olga.”

At the corner, Olga stops. “You will be home, though?”

“I promise.”

“Okay, then.” Olga gives her a kiss on each cheek and heads down the street toward her own job at the museum.

Vera catches a trolley on the next street and rides it for several blocks. She is busy thinking of ways to sneak out of work early when she enters the library.

The librarian is standing in the magnificent foyer, with her arms crossed and her right foot tapping on the marble floor impatiently.

Vera skids to a stop. “Madam Plotkin. I am sorry to be late.”

The librarian looks at the clock on the wall. “Seven minutes, to be precise.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Vera tries to appear contrite.

“You were seen yesterday in the park.”

“Oh, no. Madam Plotkin, please—”

“Do you value this employment?”

“Yes, ma’am. Very much. And I need it. For my family.”

“If I were the child of a criminal of the kingdom, I would be careful.”

“Yes, ma’am. Of course.”

The librarian brushes her hands together, as if they’d gathered dirt somehow during this conversation and now she wants to be clean. “Good. Now go to the storeroom and unpack the boxes there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I trust you will not be sick again.”

Trapped all day in the dark, dusty storage room, Vera feels like a bird banging against a glass window. She imagines Sasha on the bridge, waiting first with a smile and then with a frown.

She is desperate to run out of this oppressive quiet, but her fear is greater than her love, it seems, and that shames her even more. She is the daughter of a criminal of the kingdom, and she cannot draw attention to herself. Her family is barely making it as things are. The loss of this employment would ruin them. And so she stays, moving so erratically sometimes that her fellow workers snap at her to be careful and pay attention.

Hour after hour she stares at the clock, willing the black hand to move . . . to move . . . to click forward, and when her shift is finally over, she drops what she is doing and races for the door, emerging into the bright light of the stairwell. She hurries down the wide marble steps. In the lobby, she forces herself to slow down and moves as casually as she can across the marble floor.

Outside, she runs: down the steps, across the street to the trolley stop. When the car jangles to a halt in front of her, she squeezes into the crowd; there are so many people on board, she doesn’t need to hold on to the brass pole.

At her stop, she jumps off and runs for the corner.

The street is empty.

Then she sees the black carriages. Two of them, parked in front of the moat bridge.

Vera does not move. It is as if her knees have forgotten how to bend, and it takes all her courage just to breathe. They know she is a peasant girl, sneaking out to meet a royal, and they have come for her. Or maybe they came for him. Even a prince is not safe from the Black Knight’s reach.