The Golden Sabre. Jon Cleary
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coward and the American, who had brought these men here, was an unknown quantity. She felt suddenly overcome by fear and the heat and was ready to collapse. She would be unconscious when she was raped for the first time, which was probably the best way to be.
The sergeant straightened up, snapped something to his men in his own tongue and all six of them suddenly whirled their horses about and went galloping off down the avenue, disappearing like evaporating ghosts into the shadows of the poplars. Eden, halfway to fainting, came back to full consciousness.
‘Just as well they decided to go,’ said Frederick. ‘I’d have shot them with Father’s gun.’
‘Just what we need,’ Eden said to Olga. ‘A stupid twelve-year-old hero. We’d have all been dead before you could have loaded the gun.’
‘It’s already loaded,’ said Frederick. ‘I’ve had it loaded for weeks, just in case.’
‘I had mine ready, also just in case.’ Cabell came out of the barn carrying a Winchester rifle. ‘Those bastards looked—’
‘Mr Cabell, could you please moderate your language?’
Cabell took off his hat and inclined his head. ‘Sorry. I’ve been talking to myself for so long, I keep forgetting … Thanks, Miss Eden. You could have given me up to those guys, you know. I wouldn’t have blamed you.’
‘Never!’ Frederick was a one-boy defender against the invaders. ‘Those men are barbarians!’
‘Do be quiet, Freddie,’ said Eden. ‘Mr Cabell, where were you intending to go?’
‘I was heading for Ekaterinburg. But I’m not going to make it now – when I blew my tyres I bugg – messed up the wheels. I’ll have to go on foot, unless I can buy a horse from you.’
‘We shall sell you a horse,’ said Frederick. ‘We have dozens – Ouch!’
Eden hit him with her handbag, but did not give him a glance.
‘Mr Cabell, if you go by horse you will have to travel at night. They will be watching for you all the way to Ekaterinburg. As soon as those men get back to Verkburg they will send a message through on the telegraph to all the villages and towns between here and Ekaterinburg. These White armies do fight amongst themselves, but they also co-operate with each other sometimes. We’ll give you a horse and you can leave after dark.’
‘Miss Eden, you are a peach. And very resourceful, if I may say so.’
Eden blushed under the compliment and Olga said, ‘I love to hear a man compliment a woman. It is the way things should be.’
Cabell raised an eyebrow, then bowed. ‘At your service, Miss—’
‘Princess,’ said Olga. ‘Princess Olga Natasha Aglaida Gorshkov.’
‘I am Prince Frederick Mikhail Alexander Gorshkov,’ said Frederick, not to be out-ranked.
‘And I am plain Miss Eden Penfold.’
‘Not plain,’ said Cabell, smiling. ‘And I’m delighted to meet a fellow proletarian. As for you two aristocrats, buzz off while I talk to Miss Penfold.’
‘We stay,’ said the two aristocrats. ‘This is our house—’
Eden raised her handbag again, but Frederick and Olga moved back out of range. Cabell looked at the two children, then shrugged. ‘Okay. Are there any servants here besides that guy Nikolai?’
‘There are four in the house, but they can be trusted,’ said Eden. ‘It is the workers out in the fields I’m not sure about.’
‘One of them is a Bolshevik,’ said Frederick. ‘That fellow Vlasov. He spits in the dust every time I pass him.’
‘So should I if I were not a lady. That doesn’t make me a Bolshevik. But Freddie is right – there are some out there who are not to be trusted. Nikolai has told me of some of the talk that has been going on lately.’
Nikolai had come across from the stables and stood just behind the two children. He did not understand the conversation in English, but he looked as worried as the others. He kept glancing down the avenue, waiting for the Tartars to come thundering back and kill them all.
‘The car under that cover in the barn,’ said Cabell. ‘Does it go?’
‘It hasn’t been driven since Prince Gorshkov went off to the war last December,’ said Eden.
‘What sort is it?’
‘A Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost,’ said Frederick. ‘There are only nine Rolls-Royces in the whole of Russia and the Tsar had two of those. But Father’s is the fastest of them all.’
‘A Rolls-Royce, eh? Then that means I couldn’t borrow it or buy it?’
‘Exactly,’ said Eden firmly. ‘You will take the horse and leave tonight.’
Cabell smiled. He was not much taller than Eden, just medium height, and though he had wide shoulders there was not much beef on him. Had the managers been able to sweet-talk him back in the days of his youth he would now be a middleweight, maybe fighting the likes of Mike O’Dowd and Harry Greb; whomever he fought, the situation would be less dangerous than this. He had black hair and a black moustache and sun-darkened skin that accentuated the white exclamation of his smile. His movements were a physical illustration of his personality, quicksilver in a tube that occasionally spilled its cork. Eden liked what she saw.
‘I won’t embarrass or endanger you, Miss Penfold. I’ll be out of here tonight. In the meantime I better start covering up my truck some way, in case those soldiers come back.’
‘Afternoon tea will be at four. I’ll send one of the servants for you.’
Eden had recovered her poise. She was perhaps a little stiff and starched, but that, Cabell guessed, went with being a governess. Under her straw hat he could see blonde hair drawn back in a bun; the style was severe but it showed her long graceful neck. She had dark blue eyes with heavy lids that made it hard for her to turn a glance into a stern stare; she had a slightly indolent look about her that was deceiving, an odalisque who cracked a whip; had Croydon had harems she might never have left England. Her figure was the sort that promised much even under the high-necked shirt and long brown skirt she wore; it was an unspoken and, to her, unrealized invitation to carnal thoughts in men. Cabell, who could have carnal thoughts with the best of them, shrugged philosophically. This was no time for getting randy.
‘Come on, children, time for your music lesson.’
‘I think I shall stay with Mr Cabell,’ said Frederick; then backed off as Eden raised her handbag. ‘Don’t you dare do that again! When we have won the war I’ll see that you go to jail with all the other Bolsheviks—’
‘Inside!’ snapped Eden, and after a moment’s further rebellion Frederick followed his sister into the house. ‘Forgive him, Mr Cabell. He’s not really a bad child. He just thinks, with his father away, that he has to be master of the house.’
‘Where are their parents?’
‘Princess Gorshkov is down in Tiflis, in Georgia, and Prince Gorshkov is somewhere with General Denikin’s army. I have no idea when they will be back,’ she added worriedly. ‘Princess Gorshkov wants us to join them in Tiflis. But how does one get from here to there, a thousand miles away?’
‘A good question,’ said Cabell; but he had his own problems.
‘I’ll be ready for tea when you call me. And thanks again, Eden.’
No man had called her plain Eden since Lieutenant Dulenko had called her that and my darling five years ago; not even Prince Gorshkov departed from the formal Miss Eden when he addressed her. But Igor Dulenko was long since dead and the love she had felt for him had withered away. It was strange that a strange man, using her given name so casually, should have reminded her of Igor and what she had once felt for him.