Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

While Ned struggled with his cufflinks, his wife entered the bedroom, fully dressed, coiffed, and made up, but as yet bare of jewelry. Corinne Buckner du Pont wore a long silk sheath in charcoal gray, with a contrasting border of green silk circling her throat and dangling from her shoulders to meet in a bow in the center of her back. She had bought the dress in Paris on their way to Moscow while Ned spent several weeks with his French customers.

The couple had married during the summer of 1920, not long after Ned returned from Russia and resigned his Army commission. He accepted a position in munitions sales with the DuPont Company and, a year later, the first of their two daughters was born. Corinne knew well, of course, from news accounts and from Mark McCloud’s storytelling at social events in Philadelphia, how devoted Ned had been to the Maid, but she had never questioned him about it. For Ned’s part, he rarely spoke of Zhanna, in part because he found her so difficult to describe, and in part because he had never quite forgiven himself for failing to save her life. Nor had he ever told Corinne about Yulia. For that reason, he had steered clear of McCloud since his return to America, lest the journalist mention Yulia’s name in his wife’s presence.

Ned cast a rearward glance at his wife, seated behind him at the vanity and gazing into the lighted mirror while she tried on various combinations of necklaces and earrings. She was an attractive woman and always managed to look her best despite having borne two children and having passed the age of forty. But Ned had married Corinne more for her fine character than for her good looks, and in that respect could not have made a better choice, for Corinne always held herself and Ned to a high standard. In truth, she had helped him become a far better man than he could ever have imagined during his Army days.

Ned’s reverie was broken when the Russian governess whom Corinne had hired through the hotel entered with his older daughter, Justine, a dark-haired girl of thirteen, tall for her age and presenting a serious, bookish manner. For a moment, Ned saw a likeness in her to the young Maid he had met in 1918. He marveled that Zhanna had been only five years older than Justine when she had set out from Verkhne-Udinsk to pursue her destiny. Could Justine, or indeed any girl of eighteen, ever match what Zhanna had achieved during that fateful year?

“Might we have a word with you, Madame?” the governess asked with polite dignity as Justine lurked a few steps behind with pleading eyes. “Your daughters have asked if we might order room service rather than dress for dinner and eat in the dining room. Would that be acceptable to you?”

From the next room, Ned could hear his younger daughter, Margaretta, sobbing, and he suspected that a tantrum might not be far off.

“No objection here,” Ned offered, hoping to sway his wife’s decision toward leniency.

“I’ll consider it,” Corinne replied without interrupting her work at the mirror. “Wait a few minutes and I’ll join you to discuss it.”

The governess gave a respectful nod and disappeared with Justine in hand.

“Why don’t you go on ahead,” Corinne suggested to Ned with a resigned look, as if anticipating that negotiations with the girls might take more time than her husband could afford. “I’ll join you downstairs as soon as I can.”

“Capital idea,” he replied, flashing his wife a grateful smile as he made for the door.

Ned took the elevator to the lobby, admiring its bas-relief cast bronze doors that bore images of Old Muscovy. The reception room that he had booked was not the hotel’s largest, but it was conveniently located off the lobby and was most impressive, with its white vaulted ceilings and dramatic indirect lighting. He had also reserved a small adjoining dining room to which his dinner party of eighteen guests would adjourn following the reception.

The sound of Russian folk music from a trio of balalaika,[48] accordion, and violin players met his ears as he joined the reception. Waiters in traditional Russian costumes circulated with trays of champagne, aperitifs, and cocktails, while a buffet was laid to one side of the room with appetizing zakuski and half a dozen varieties of the finest Beluga, Ossetra, Sevruga and salmon caviars.

Wouldn’t Mark McCloud have loved to lay into those fish eggs, Ned thought. He imagined the journalist taking up a position near the bar where he could conveniently snag glasses of champagne from trays passing by. But McCloud would not be coming to dinner tonight. He had died in his sleep five years earlier, just as Madame Yelena had predicted aboard the Red Cross train to Omsk, having regaled European and American lecture audiences for more than a decade with tales of how the Maid of Baikal emerged from obscurity and won the Russian Civil War almost single-handedly.