Bear Against the Sun (eBook)

Prologue

Blood on Khodynka Meadow, Moscow, 1896

The day began peacefully enough; it was a day of hope, of promise. The crowd started gathering before dawn, dozens of people at first, then hundreds, then thousands until nearly a half million people stood on the meadow. Spirits were high, the crowd joyous, the day bright with sunshine. Strangers struck up conversations and chattered cheerfully. Here and there, children frolicked. All waited for a glimpse of the new tsar.

The small girl in a ragged dress bounced on her toes, arms raised. “I can’t see, Mama.”

“Tatya, you are getting too big for this,” Olga said, lifting up her daughter with a grunt.

“I did not know there were so many people in the whole world, Mama. Can we get closer?”

“Be patient, child. We’ll see the new tsar and someday you can tell your grandchildren about this.

“He has gifts for us, Tatya. After he leaves, we will get bread and sausage and a souvenir mug to remind us of today. Look!”

Olga pointed at the enormous piles of gifts in center of the field, roped off and guarded by a dozen Cossacks. Hundreds of burdened wagons lined up as far as the eye could see, ready to replenish the goods.

Olga watched as a dirty young boy led a score of urchins toward the prize. He clearly planned to get his comrades close to the mountain of food to make sure they got all they could carry. Each had a cloth bag tucked under his shirt to fill with booty. The boy looked about him, and then, satisfied they were ready to go, waved his cloth cap above his head—the signal.

The boys leaped over or under the rope barrier from several directions at once, baffling the Cossacks. Those nearest the center began tossing bread and sausages to their confederates.

The Cossacks’ shouting set off a tide of confusion and noise that rippled through the crowd toward the perimeter. One voice after another added to the chorus.

“What is going on?” “Is he here? Is he here?” “Are they giving out the food?” Heads swiveled this way and that.

As the guards tried to stop them, the boys, laden with loot, slipped between the legs of some, around others, and made for the edge of the crowd. A Cossack grabbed the leader by his collar and was enthusiastically hitting him. Another boy fell under the feet of the crowd but most of them managed to escape.

Olga felt the crowd surge forward, eager to not be left out when the goods were distributed. The ranks nearest the center moved first, and then those behind them pushed from every point in the compass, compressing the mass of human bodies, and so compacting the mob that no one could move without those around them moving too. People fell beneath churning feet. The old, the sick, and children were the first to tumble and be crushed; then stronger adults and even some of the outnumbered Cossacks fell victim. In just a few minutes the giant gathering became a roiling mass. Tatya shrieked in Olga’s arms as arms and legs snapped, ribs cracked, faces became unrecognizable, and many were trampled to death. Screams of pain, panic, horror and despair overwhelmed the few voices of reason; the air thickened with smells of blood, of voided bowels, of unwashed bodies.

The human maelstrom carried Olga in one direction and then another. She nearly lost her daughter as she hugged her tightly and made a desperate attempt to carry her back through the surging crowd. Impossible! Tatya slipped out of her grasp and fell down.

“Mama, Mama!”

Olga yanked her up just in time. Behind her a row of a dozen people holding on to one another tumbled to the ground together. Unhesitatingly, Olga stumbled over them, kicking at those arms and legs and heads that got in her way.

“Out of the way! Out of the way! I must save my child!” She gained a few yards before the crowd closed in again, threatening her hold on her daughter. Tatya screamed. Blood flowed from her nose and from a cut on one leg.

The fallen were done for. There was nowhere for the others to stand but on top of them and the churning feet slowly ground them to bloody pieces. The eyes of the people were wide with terror. like those of horses trapped by fire. Slowly, the living mob paused and breathed like the ocean on a shoreline at slack tide, and then, like the tide, resumed its movement. On the fringes of the crowd, the outer layers peeled away as people hobbled, crawled or limped away from the horror behind them.

Olga yelled at those nearby, giving orders and trying to get them to stop pushing. Her voice was strong, and a small portion of the crowd in her immediate vicinity stopped surging. “Take my daughter,” she commanded to a couple behind her. “Pass her toward the outside, away from the crowd.”

“Mama, Mama! Hold onto me!”

Olga pried her daughter’s fingers loose from her dress and passed her to the dumbstruck couple.

As if grateful to have something sane to do, the man grasped Tatiana, held her on his shoulder and yelled to the people behind him. They too, seemed to seize on the thought of doing something rational, any relief from the madness. A tiny current of sanity coursed through that sliver of the mob as one person after another passed the struggling girl from hand to hand until she disappeared from Olga’s sight, the crowd thinned, and she was put down. The small droplet of reason quickly evaporated, and the crowd resumed grinding and surging. Tatiana struggled against the mob to fight her way back and find her mother but person after person ran past her, running or staggering away from the slaughter at the center. Several knocked her to the ground. Defeated and bleeding she walked to the edge of the field, sat down and cried. Blood from her nose and from a scalp wound ran unnoticed down her face.

Dozens of carriages bearing nobility approached the field and stopped. The meadow looked like a battlefield. Some of the wounded staggered off without assistance. Family members and strangers carried many of the dead and bleeding. Thousands of others fled in every direction. Some paused, turned, and gaped in horror once they reached safety. Others kept going without a backward glance.

The tsar and tsarina, escorted by a troop of cavalry, arrived and soon left, stunned. Most of the aristocracy who arrived with the royal couple left with them. A few others stayed on and looked on in shock at the violence before them.

Prince Boris Medved told his coachman to pull out and around the row of carriages in front of him so he could get a better look. His wife, Marina, and son, Ivan, craned their necks, taking in the scene from the carriage window.

“Careful, Ilya, look out for the mob but see if you can get us a little closer.” As they drew nearer, a troop of Cossacks passed them at full gallop.

“This is far enough, Ilya. Pull over to the side and stop,” Medved said. He sat staring at the carnage, barely aware of the crying little girl in the torn, bloody dress sitting by the side of the road.

Eleven-year-old Ivan shouted, “Papa, look! A little girl. I think she is hurt.”

Ivan’s mother said, “Ivan, stay where you are. I do not want you to get caught up in this.” But Ivan was already on the ground and running to the child. Medved followed his son to the edge of the road. “Papa, it is the girl we saw in church,” Ivan said.

Ivan’s mother looked again at the girl, “Holy Mother, she is the living image of my younger sister who God had claimed by pneumonia in our childhood.” She stared for only a moment before her maternal instincts took over. “We must help the poor child,” she ordered, alighting from the carriage and hurrying to the side of the little girl. “Who are you, little one? Where are your parents?” The girl only cried harder as Marina took her in her arms, heedless of the blood dripping on her dress.

“Leave her alone,” Medved told his wife, “Her troubles are none of our business. I am sure her mother and father will be along any minute.”

“Boris, we must not leave her alone until they appear.”

They returned to the carriage and waited. They waited until the crowd gradually dispersed, and soldiers, their faces grim, began loading the dead onto carts. Many more lay motionless in the meadow in the grotesque postures of the violently dead. No one came for the girl. The shadows marched across the field as the sun began to set and the afternoon turned chill. In the carriage, the girl lay half asleep in Marina’s arms. Weeping.

Boris Medved frequently looked at his watch, his patience ticking away with the minutes.

“Marina, let her go with the other injured. The tsar will send out doctors and others to deal with this and they are better equipped. And look at her. She is dirty and poor, and I do not want some street urchin staying at our house.”

“Boris, this child is coming home with us, and that is that. And we should leave now.” With that she covered the girl with a blanket and sat back with a look her husband knew well.

Boris sighed to the coachman, “Ilya, home it is.”

Marina marshaled the servants to care for the sobbing child. “Nina,” she told a maid, “draw a bath and prepare a bedroom.” She turned the girl over to two other maids who carefully walked her up the stairs between them as Marina followed. “And Nina, tell the cook to send up broth and fruit.”

Tatya wiped the tears out of her eyes with a dirty hand, bewildered at the richness of the scene around her....