Child Thief (10 page)

‘Have you come to see who else you can drag from his house?' I said. ‘Or have you come to express your shame? Your husband has sent you to hang your head for him?'

‘No,' she said. ‘We can't find Dariya.'

8

For a moment, no one spoke. In my mind, I saw the two children lying on the sled. I saw them in the bottom of a cold hole, waiting for the soil to be thrown over them.

‘When did you see her last?' Natalia broke the spell.

‘This morning. Before …' But Svetlana couldn't say it. She didn't even want to think about what she'd been a part of.

‘And you haven't seen her since?' Natalia asked.

‘You probably scared her away,' I said. ‘Frightened the poor child with your hanging.' I shook my head and turned my back. I went to the table and sat down with my sons.

‘Do you think she saw what happened?' Natalia asked her sister.

‘I saw,' I said. ‘The shame you must feel. Do you know who that man was? He—'

‘Enough.' Natalia cut me short. ‘Sveta has lost her daughter. Your niece. Have some sympathy.'

‘I'm not sure I have any left.'

Natalia tutted. ‘Come in, Sveta. Come out of the cold.'

The little warmth we managed to conjure with the small fire was escaping through the open door, so Natalia invited Svetlana inside and closed it behind her.

Svetlana Ivanovna was a large woman. Not fat though, nobody had enough food to be fat. She was tall and strong; from a long line of farmers. She had strong shoulders and strong hands, a large frame beneath the extensive dress. She wore a plain dark headscarf which covered black hair, and she watched with dark
eyes. Svetlana and Natalia shared some features – they had the same sharp nose, the same prominent chin and searching eyes – but they were different in more ways than they were similar. Svetlana was more insular, she had grown up and outlived her parents in Vyriv, spent her whole life in this village, marrying Dimitri and working the same land for years. Natalia, on the other hand, had forged away from rural living and farming. She had travelled to Moscow to find a life other than farming. She became a worker and could recount stories of the first revolution, the unrest spreading from Petersburg to Moscow in the year after I was conscripted. I was a soldier when we met in Moscow, and she became pregnant with our sons, but my life as a soldier gave little support so she returned home to Vyriv before the outbreak of the war with Germany. For many years we saw little of each other. First the Great War and then the civil war kept us apart. But when they were done, I came home to her and my sons. A woman and two ten-year-old boys I barely knew. But our bond grew strong, and when Lara was born, our family was complete.

‘Lara might know where she is,' Petro said, looking at me and shrugging. ‘They were playing together when I found her. Maybe she knows where she was going.'

I didn't want Svetlana in the house. After what she and her husband had participated in only a few hours earlier, I wanted to turn her around and push her through the door, and the only things stopping me were Natalia and a small vein of sympathy just below the surface of my anger. She was worried about her daughter, just as any mother would be, and I had to tell myself it was Dimitri who had instigated the hanging, not Svetlana.

I put the heavy revolver on the table and pushed it away before waving a hand. ‘Ask her.'

Natalia called to her, and when Lara came from the other room, she was still wearing the medal around her neck. The orange stripes in the ribbon stood out against the black of her dress, and the colours depicting the slaying of the dragon were vibrant. ‘What is it, Mama?'

‘Do you know where Dariya is?'

Lara thought about it for a second, pursing her lips. ‘No.' She shook her head.

‘You sure?' I asked. ‘There isn't somewhere she goes?'

Again she shook her head.

‘If there's something, you must tell us,' Natalia pressed her. ‘Whatever you can think of. Your aunt is worried about her.'

‘Anything.' Sevetlana's eyes pleaded. ‘Anything at all, Larissa.' She was willing her to know where Dariya was.

Lara tightened her lips and shook her head.

‘Where did you go with her this morning?' I put out a hand and brought Lara to me. I lifted her to sit on my knee and I put my face against the back of her head, above the place where her hair was gathered into a bun. I could see the pale skin of her scalp in the parting and I breathed the scent of her hair and rubbed my hands on her shoulders.

‘Just at the back,' she said.

‘In the field?'

‘Yes. Where Petro came.'

‘And when Petro came, what then? What did Dariya do then?'

‘She stayed.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Yes.'

I looked up at Svetlana and opened my hands to her. ‘She doesn't know.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Natalia.

Svetlana watched us as if she thought we might be hiding something from her, then she nodded and turned to the door.

As soon as Svetlana was gone, Lara jumped down from my knee and went to the other room without looking at any of us.

‘Is there something she's not telling us?' Natalia said in a quiet voice. ‘Do you think she knows where Dariya is?'

‘No, why wouldn't she tell us?' I said. ‘She can see how upset your sister is.'

‘Because she's nine years old?' Natalia said. ‘And because children sometimes have secrets.'

‘She's probably just worried about her cousin.'

‘Maybe.'

‘I'll talk to her,' Petro stood up. ‘Sometimes she talks to me.'

I looked at him. ‘Really? About what?'

Petro shrugged and there was the trace of a smile in his eyes. A small victory for him. A moment of subdued pride. ‘Nothing much,' he said. ‘Sometimes we talk, that's all.'

‘Fine. Talk to her.'

Outside I could hear voices.

‘It's Dimitri,' Natalia said, going to the window. ‘He's with some of the other men.'

‘Coming here?'

‘Looks like it.'

Viktor went to stand beside his mother, but I remained where I was, wondering what else could happen today.

‘No,' Viktor said. ‘They're going round the back. Where Lara said they were playing.' He looked at me. ‘Maybe we should help.'

The sound of voices outside grew quiet again as the group of searchers moved away.

‘They'll find her,' I said. ‘They don't need us.'

‘You mean they don't deserve your help?' Natalia said. ‘That's what you mean, isn't it?'

I picked up the photograph on the table and studied the family burned onto it. A trick of light that captured an image and stored it as if it would exist for ever. A family that had no inkling of what the future held for it. ‘Yes,' I said. ‘That's exactly what I mean.'

‘She's your
niece
.'

I could feel their eyes on me as I stared at the photograph. ‘They don't need my help.'

‘Of course not,' Natalia said. ‘There are enough of them.'

‘Right.'

‘And they're good men.'

‘Are they?'

‘Mostly, yes, I think they are, Luka. You've said yourself that
they're afraid, and people do bad things when they're afraid. Rash things.'

‘
We
didn't.' I looked at her.

‘No, but I know you too well, Luka Mikhailovich. I know what's in your heart, even when you try to hide it from me.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘I can see it,' she said. ‘You think you should've done more to stop them. You feel like it's your fault too.'

‘It isn't.'

‘No, it isn't. And that's what makes you even more angry – they put you in that position.'

I opened my mouth to reply, but caught my words when Petro came out from the other room, holding the door wide. ‘I think they've found something.'

‘Found what?' Natalia asked after a moment of silence. ‘What have they found?'

‘Come and look.'

Standing at the back window, my knees against the bed, I could see much of the area behind the house. To the left, the side of our barn. There was a small yard, the snow trampled and kicked into furrows and tracks that came from everywhere and went nowhere. So many times had the ground outside been trodden over the past two days. The sled, the animals, the mob that had lynched a man from a naked tree, and now this.

The group of men, I counted seven of them, had gone through the yard, looking for the place where Lara and Dariya had been playing. Beyond, there was an open field, white, glistening in the orange light from the falling sun. There was a patch of disturbed snow just on the other side of the fence where Lara must have been because I could see how the snow had been built up into balls, and I knew she and Dariya liked to roll the snow.

But the men had moved beyond that and were now hiking away, seven dark stains on the glorious white. They were heading up the back of the shallow valley towards a line of poplar trees that stood on the crest like a regiment of well trained soldiers.
Tall and straight they stood; their branches reaching upwards, their narrow bodies proud. In the summer they would be a soft green against the pale blue sky, and the field would be filled with red winter wheat moving in waves. The gold and green would ripple as the breeze moved through it. And just below the window, around the base of the fence, flowers would spring with colourful life.

‘Where are they going?' Lara asked.

‘They must have found something,' Viktor said. ‘A trail maybe.'

I turned to look at Lara, but she wasn't watching the figures advancing on the poplars. She was sitting with her back to the window, scrutinising the medal. Or at least that's what she wanted us to think, because as I watched her, she dared a sideways glance at me and I saw the secret in her eyes.

She quickly looked away, creasing her brow, inspecting the medal.

‘What is it, Lara?' I asked her. ‘What's the matter?'

She didn't answer.

‘I want you to tell me,' I said, going to sit beside her. ‘I know there's something.'

Again the sideways glance.

‘Larissa, if there's something you know, I want you to tell me right now.' And I sensed something move in to replace my anger at Dimitri and Svetlana and the others. I felt my own urgency before I realised it was there. An unease crept in, like cold fingers slipping around the back of my neck. Seeing those figures moving up the valley, and with the impression that Lara was hiding something, I began to wonder if there was more to this. Something was wrong.

‘Lara.' I softened my voice.

She looked at me. She was deciding, struggling with her thoughts.

‘You're not in any trouble,' Natalia said. ‘Do you know where Dariya is? Her mama and papa are worried about her. Something might have happened to her.'

A glistening redness washed over her dark eyes. She tightened her lips, her chin rising a touch.

I ran a hand over her head. ‘You're not in trouble, my angel, I promise, but you must tell me—'

And with the compassionate tone from both mother and father, the tears came as they inevitably would. And to accompany them, the words of confession to a crime that was no crime at all.

‘We sometimes go up to the trees,' she said. ‘We have a place where we play.'

And I didn't need to ask why she hadn't told us. She wasn't allowed there, that was all. She had been forbidden to go that far from the village.

‘And you think that's where she may have gone?'

Lara nodded.

‘Why do you think that?' Natalia asked, sitting beside us. ‘Did she
say
she was going?'

She shook her head. ‘I saw.'

‘You saw?'

‘I saw her go. After Petro brought me back and you made me come inside, I was sitting here and I saw her run around the house. She ran around and went straight up. I watched her all the way to the trees.'

‘Where those men are now?' I pointed at the window and the dark smudges on the snow beyond.

Lara nodded.

‘OK,' I said. ‘Good girl.'

‘Am I in trouble?' she asked.

‘We'll talk about that later.'

I took Natalia's elbow and beckoned her through to the front room. ‘Do you think Dariya saw what they did? What her father did?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘Why else would she run away like that?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Dimitri's such an idiot. What he did. Trying to do it to make
his child safe, and now he's damaged her for ever. Imagine if you saw your father do a thing like that. String a man up from a tree and—'

‘That's enough.' She glanced over my shoulder at the bedroom door. ‘We have to live with these people. They're our friends, Luka. Svetlana's my sister. And Dariya is safe.'

‘If she hasn't frozen to death up there, have you thought about that?'

‘Luka.'

‘You imagine how that idiot will feel if he's driven his daughter away to freeze to death on the rise. Hanging a man to make her safe, while frightening her away to die.'

‘Luka!' her voice harsh but quiet. The words hissed. And her eyes were over my shoulder again.

I turned to see Lara behind me. Fresh tears in her eyes. ‘It's my fault,' she said. ‘I killed Dariya.' She ran to her mother and threw her arms around her.

‘No, angel, she'll be fine. You'll see. The men will find Dariya.' Natalia narrowed her eyes at me and stroked our daughter's hair, running her hardened fingers over her head.

‘Will you go?' Lara turned to look at me. ‘You'll find her.'

I forced a smile. ‘If Dariya is there, your Uncle Dimitri will find her. They don't need me.'

‘Please,' she said.

‘Lara, it's not your fault.'