Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“It is a matter of common sense, Your Honor. I was a soldier living among soldiers. If I had dressed as a woman, they would have thought of me as one. When I dress in uniform, the men must think of me as a soldier and I can be with them just as I am at home with my father and brothers.”

“But here you no longer dwell among soldiers,” Bishop Fyodor pointed out impatiently.

“No, I live now with the Cheka’s Latvian guards. Do you expect me to lie about in petticoats with such men?” Zhanna asked with a sideways look, evoking laughter from the gallery. But it also brought and a swift reaction from the bishop.

“The gallery will refrain from such outbursts or we will adjourn into closed session!” Fyodor ordered with a withering glare toward the spectators. “Am I understood? Good, then.” After a deliberate pause he resumed. “We are gathered here for the trial entitled “Soviet Union vs. Zhanna, Maid of Baikal.”

“Which is exactly how it feels to me,” Zhanna noted with a wry smile, holding up her shackled wrists, raw and scabbed from chafing. This in turn evoked loud snickers from the audience behind her.

“Silence! I give you my final warning!” the bishop barked before waiting for the room to grow silent. After a few moments, the noise died down. “Now, chief examiner, please read out the charges against the accused.”

All twelve charges were read verbatim, including those of heresy, apostasy, and rebellion against the Holy Church, which in all comprised an indictment of more than ten pages. Even so, the examiners had begun their task with seventy charges, and had required weeks to reduce their number to twelve.

“The accused shall now enter a plea of guilty or not guilty,” the judge went on. “Accused, how do you plead?”

“Not guilty, of course,” the Maid replied, meeting the judge’s gaze straight on.

Here Bishop Fyodor gave a self-satisfied smile and spread his chubby hands on the table, leaning forward as if to address the Maid on a personal rather than an official level.

“I must advise you, Zhanna Stepanovna,” he told her, in an almost avuncular tone, “that if you admit your guilt now, this trial will end and the court will extend such leniency as is consistent with the laws of the Holy Church. Do you wish to change your plea so as to avail yourself of the court’s leniency?”

“Leniency, you say?” the girl shot back, her voice rising sharply. “Surely you must be joking! This court has neither the authority nor the inclination to grant such a thing. I know full well that you intend to put me to death, regardless of what I say. You think that, once I’m dead, the Bolsheviks will conquer all of Russia. But you will not! Even if the Red Army had a million more soldiers than you do, you would not win.”

The girl’s blunt rebuke drew gasps from the audience, followed by an anxious chatter that soon filled the chapel.

“Order! Order! Silence, or I will have the gallery cleared!” Bishop Fyodor demanded. As if to prove his resolve, he pointed to several spectators at the front, whom the bailiff and his assistants seized by the collar and hustled out through a side door. When the noise subsided, he spoke again.

“Let it be recorded that the accused has pled ‘not guilty.’ Her trial will commence at this time tomorrow morning. The court is adjourned.”

No sooner did Bishop Fyodor bang his gavel than he rose quickly and left through a rear door, retiring to his private chambers in the chapel sanctuary. But on arriving there, he drew a sharp breath, for Commissar Yurovsky was waiting for him just inside the door. The man was about forty years old, tall and lean, with an unremarkable face except for small unblinking eyes and a malicious little beard that made him look like a man of the past century. He wore a black leather jacket, peaked cap and riding breeches, under whose wide belt was tucked a heavy Nagant revolver. Without a word, the Chekist drew close to the cleric so that their faces were only inches apart, and then unleashed a torrent of abuse.

“What a babbling idiot you turned out to be!” he raved at the cleric. “I ask for a trial and you give me a bloody passion play! Why, that girl had the gallery eating out of her hand. Well, no more. Tomorrow you will clear the room. All further proceedings will be held in camera. No gallery! Is that clear?”

“As you wish,” the terrified bishop answered. For he knew that, if he resisted the Cheka in the slightest degree, he would surely never become Archbishop of Ryazan, and might conceivably face a far worse fate.

* * *

On the first morning of her trial, Zhanna arrived in the courtroom blinking, as if aroused from a deep sleep or plucked all at once from a place of darkness. She stood unsteadily in the dock, chains hanging limply at her wrists and ankles. But then she drew herself up to her full height and stared at the judge with cool and steady eyes. Though her guards had kept her up most of the night to grind her down for today’s trial, she seemed to tap into a special reservoir of strength to go on.