Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“The story best suited to hiding a secret is generally the one that is closest to the truth,” Neilson advised. “I recommend that you say that they are American railway men who have not found lodging in the city between trips. That will also help explain the frequent comings and goings of our couriers between here and Omsk. I doubt strongly whether even the Bolsheviks will take an interest in American railway men enjoying a rest break.”

Though the three concluded their business a short while later, Ned and Neilson remained longer to chat with their hostess about local conditions, news of the war, and shared interests. When the men finally rose to leave, Yulia offered them a tour of the grounds, since this was Ned’s first visit to Beregovoy.

The tour led through frozen fields, most of them neither planted nor harvested since 1917, past the estate’s empty granaries, its vacant pigsties and silent henhouses, and back to the single-story lodge, where snow had drifted through holes in the roof and several broken windows.

“It needs work, but we’ll have it whipped into shape in no time,” Ned announced after marching up and down the lodge’s central aisle, inspecting several of the bunks and giving a detailed examination to the cast-iron wood stove. “I’ll draw up a list of repairs tomorrow before I return to the city.”

“Tomorrow, you say?” Neilson repeated. “Surely you don’t intend to spend the night here?”

“Why not? I’d like to get a sense of what it’s like after dark, if Yulia doesn’t mind,” Ned replied. “I brought a bed roll and will fire up the stove. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

Neilson cast an anxious glance at Ned while avoiding the widow’s gaze.

“But what will you do for dinner?” Neilson pressed.

“I was planning to explore the village and find something to eat there,” Ned answered. “Why don’t we ride down together as far as the river? Then I’ll peel off toward the village and return here before dark.”

But no sooner did Ned part from Neilson at Beregovoy village than the overcast sky turned leaden and heavy storm clouds swept down on the village from the north. Moments later, the first snowflakes fell and within minutes a thin blanket of snow covered the road back to the estate. Ned abandoned his search for dinner and headed back up the hill.

Outside the lodge, Ned found some dry birch firewood and lit a blaze in the iron stove before setting out to plug the holes in the damaged windows. He had nearly finished the task when Yulia’s elderly manservant, Genrikh, entered the lodge without knocking and invited Ned to the main house for dinner. By now, the wind was howling outdoors and half a foot of new snow had fallen. A hot meal and a few hours close to a blazing stove or fireplace might be a very good idea, Ned realized, and followed the old man to the house.

Upon arriving, Genrikh took Ned’s coat and led him to the dining room, where places were laid for two and candles lit on the long refectory table at the end closest to the fireplace. Ned’s attention was drawn immediately to an antique sideboard along the room’s eastern wall, above which hung a silver crucifix surrounded by gilded icon paintings of Jesus, the Holy Mother and assorted saints. On the sideboard, a votive candle shed its flickering light upon several small icons behind. Ned turned away from the icons in time to see Yulia enter the room from the kitchen, dressed in an ankle-length skirt of dark brown wool and a cream-colored collarless silk blouse under a short loden jacket.

She possessed a stunning figure, and Ned felt something stir within that he had not felt for months, not even during his brief infatuation with Zhanna Dorokhina. For Yulia was a real woman, not an innocent youth, and completely fair game—if one didn’t count the non-fraternization rules. He smiled as he saw something in her look that made him suspect she regarded him in the same way.

The meal was generous: roast duck in gravy with side dishes of boiled potatoes, pickled beets and mushrooms, steamed cabbage, and freshly baked bread. Their conversation centered at first on innocuous topics like their respective childhoods, school days, family histories and the like, and slowly drifted forward to the present.

Yulia recounted how she had spent little time in Russia since early childhood and, even after her marriage, never expected to reside there. But when her husband’s trading business fell on hard times during the Great War and he came to depend heavily on income from his family’s interests in Russia, he moved to Petrograd. Soon after, the Bolsheviks seized power there and he sent her a telegram announcing his departure for Omsk to take charge of his family’s properties there. By now seriously short of funds, Yulia sold their London town house, enrolled their two young boys in a British boarding school, and set out like a Decembrist[16] wife to share her husband’s plight in Siberia. She arrived in Omsk in January of 1918.