Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“Saint Yekaterina warned me not to listen to your fine words, nor trust in your charity. You promised me life but you lied,” she accused, stepping toward him and straining at her chains. “To you, life consists merely of not being stone dead. Your idea of penance is to shut me off from the light of the sky and the sight of fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again ride my Buryat pony, nor climb the grassy hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness; and to keep from me everything that brings me to the love of God. I tell you, such penance is worse even than the fiery furnace of the Bible! And it is by your very eagerness to impose it on me that I know beyond any doubt that your counsel is from the devil and mine is from God.”

Bishop Fyodor looked away, his lips pressed into a tight line.

“The firing squad is assembled,” Father Leo told him over the anxious murmurings of the other examiners. “Let them dispatch her without delay.”

But instead the judge pulled Leo in close.

“No, send her back to her cell,” Fyodor told him through clenched teeth. “But have the Cheka keep the firing squad ready. I must speak to Yurovsky first.”

The guards did as they were told, goading her with their rifle butts and jeering to her face that a swift death was too good for the likes of a whoring counter-revolutionary witch like her.

* * *

For the rest of the day, Zhanna remained under close watch in the Cheka lockup. Toward evening, however, Bishop Fyodor dispatched to her cell the same three examiners who had gone there earlier to show her the trial transcript. This time they were sent to present the remainder of the transcript, through her sentencing, and to have her and her defense counsel certify to its accuracy. The judge, it seemed, was taking every precaution to defend his actions against future criticism from any quarter.

As before, Zhanna displayed an uncanny memory for detail and suggested multiple corrections to the transcript, however unlikely they were to benefit her. As the team recorded them, Timofey managed to arrange a few moments alone with the Maid, showing his face for the first time while he whispered his name. Zhanna looked into the man’s eyes, gave a smile of recognition, and laid her shackled hand atop his.

“It’s good to see a friendly face,” she told him quietly.

“I came here so that you wouldn’t be alone,” he said. “But I have no way of saving you. If you can think of one, tell me at once and I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen.”

“Don’t fret on my account,” the Maid replied, giving his hand a squeeze. “My Voices have told me that I committed a mortal sin by denying God in order to save my life. Having sinned so, I would just as soon do my penance all at once and put a period to my suffering.”

“As you wish,” Timofey responded, though it seemed to him a truly terrible thing for such a young and lovely creature to die so cruel a death. “But is there no other way for me to help you?”

Zhanna withdrew her hand, slipped it under her dress at the throat, and withdrew something from her breast that she tucked hastily into Timofey’s open palm. Despite the darkness, he saw a glint of gold and recognized it as a gold signet ring. Somehow, she had found a way to keep it hidden throughout the weeks of her captivity and close supervision.

“Return it to its owner, whom you know well,” she whispered. “I won’t need it any longer.”

Then in a louder voice, she told him, “Now I wish to receive the Eucharist. This is a necessity of life for me and I long to experience it one last time. Can you arrange it?”

With the consent of his fellow examiners and of the chief guard, Timofey conducted the sacrament, using Zhanna’s bed as an altar and the remains of her evening bread and water as wine and wafer. When the sacrament was finished, a long pause followed before Timofey rose to leave. As he did, Zhanna spoke again.

“Where will I find myself when this is all over, Father Timofey?” she asked in a plaintive voice. “What will become of my soul?”

“Do you trust in God?” he asked her.

“I do.”

“Then, by His grace, you will surely find yourself in paradise, amid such joy as no mortal being can possibly imagine.”

* * *

Timofey awoke before sunrise the next morning and went down to the monastery courtyard to see if any further plans had been made for the Maid’s execution. The guard in charge of the night shift told him that no word had been received during the night about Zhanna’s fate. So Timofey took a place in the guardhouse next to a fire that burned in a crude metal stove and waited for the glimmer of dawn to appear beyond the monastery’s east wall.