The Rose Stone

PART ONE

Russia, Poland, Amsterdam, 1874-1875

Chapter One

The rutted and waterlogged road that had started in death and terror and that led – so far as the exhausted child could tell – to the promise of little better, stretched bleakly to a cloud-smudged horizon that seemed never to change, never to come any closer no matter how the travellers laboured. The girl bowed her head, and fixed her eyes despairingly upon the rough ground just a yard in front of her, trying not to see the endless, awful miles ahead. For how many days now – how many weeks – had they been following this hateful ribbon of potholed mud and stone westward? She could not recall. She only knew that sometimes now it seemed that she could barely remember a time when this had not been her life: the freezing rain and foul, squelching mire, painful feet and cruelly aching legs, and always the necessity, the compulsion, to tramp on. To what? Day after day in raw cold that chilled her to the bone despite the overlarge and moth-eaten fur jacket that Uncle Josef had managed somehow to acquire for her she trudged blindly on, the origins of this fearful journey often blessedly forgotten, the possibility of an end unimaginable. They slept at night in any haven they could find – a noisy tavern, a hayloft or byre, or at best, when some peasant woman took pity upon a child’s pinched and weary face, upon the beaten mud floor of a crowded hovel before the fire. The girl drew a long, trembling breath, watched muddy water slurp around her ruined boots as she plodded through an ice-filmed puddle that she was simply too tired to avoid, and wondered how much further they must struggle today before the relief of roof and rest. Despite the cold, despite the movement, her eyelids drooped as she walked. She would not even mind if, as so often before, there were nothing to eat – she was simply tired to death, the ankle she had twisted yesterday paining her badly. Her eyes closed again, the comforting dark at least some refuge from the misery around her, and against her own volition she found herself drifting into that waking dream world that was both her sanctuary and, if she were unwary, her terror.

A small white bed. Fragrant sheets. The last rosy blush of an evening sun lighting the familiar ceiling of the night nursery. The comforting sound of a lullaby as one of the Georgian maids crooned to baby Olga in the room next door. The calling of her brothers as they tumbled on the lawns below—

Don’t think of it.

She was conscious of a faint lift of sound in her head, a sound that had its source somewhere in the base of her own skull; a keening, an echo of misery that if she allowed it – and in the worst of circumstances she had discovered that it could be almost a relief to allow it – would overwhelm her, drown her, beating from her brain all thought, all terrible memory. Once – it now seemed long ago, for the sun had been shining and the roads had been dry, and dusty – when they had been travelling with the gypsies, the terrifying boy with the rat’s face whose greatest pleasure had been to torment the frail, pale little stranger who had fallen in with them on the road, had discovered her horror of fire and had chased her with a burning brand. That had been the worst time. The sound had risen to a crescendo to burst her head. Stumbling from him, the brutal smell of burning flesh in her nostrils, she had begun to scream, had screamed herself to blessed, mindless oblivion until the feel of Uncle Josef’s hands upon her shoulders, the urgent sound of his voice had brought her from terror to silence. She opened her eyes now, blinking against the windblown sleet’s razor edge, and glanced up at him. He walked as always, grim-faced, eyes fixed upon the muddy track ahead, her hand tight in his, his heavy sack bouncing rhythmically upon his shoulder. She knew that the burden chafed with every step through leather and cotton to the skin beneath, had seen once the raw redness of his back beneath the torn and dirty shirt where the tender skin had been flayed to blood. Yet she knew that, next to her own hand, his grip upon that dirty sack would be the last thing he would relinquish. And she knew why. The dop, the tang, the heavy wheel known as the scaithe, the small precious leather bag – if they had a future, here it lay. Night after night she would doze off to the sound of his voice talking of a far-off and unimaginable place called Amsterdam, of a new life, of a home and warmth and rest and comfort. She flinched from the thought. A home? Without the gentleness of her mother? Her glorious, graceful, bright-faced father? Her brothers and sisters and baby Olga? Grandfather, with his stern voice and twinkling eyes? Sometimes she told herself – yes, they will be waiting, and we will be together again, and happy. But sometimes the truth would not be denied, and she knew they would not. The eldritch ringing began again in her head, distant, insistent.

Don’t think of it.

Bright-eyed faces, laughing. The flower-filled fields of spring. Picnics, and games across the fields. The musical running of the silvered river as the winter snows melted. Her brother Josef – named in friendship after this same man who now strode silently beside her – his brown, serious face gentle as he lifted her to see a perfectly woven nest securely enclosing the dear, funny little fledglings with their blinking eyes and gaping beaks—

Don’t think of it!

Too late. Blood now and screams. A soft baby head crushed like rotten fruit. A brutal hand in her sister’s long, flying hair, that stopped her flight and dragged her back to death. The unspeakable things that the devils had done to her mother – her father’s pleading, anguished and desperate as, laughing, they had held him to watch. And then, after that nightmare of blood, the fire. The smell, that had crept to her nostrils as she had crouched, half dead with terror, in the water barrel behind the workshop, her secret hiding place in their children’s games.

Don’t think of it.

Too late now. Much, much too late.

She stopped walking. From some far distance she heard someone screaming; a thin, shrill sound like the cry of an injured animal.

Tanya! Josef was on his knees in front of her, his grip on her shoulders painful, the precious sack fallen disregarded in the mud beside him. "Tanya!"

The sound subsided. She stood quite still, trembling, tears pouring soundlessly down her face. He gathered her fiercely to him, crushing her, hurting her. The leather of his jacket was hard and cold. Something sharp dug into her cheek. Passively she stood, still shaking, unresisting in his arms, an unhappy, docile little doll.

Josef Rosenberg drew back, looked into the huge, haunted eyes of the child and cursed savagely the land of his birth.

Later he watched her in sleep, the thin little face a pale, beautiful mask within its haloed cloud of hair, the enormous eyes closed, violet-shadowed within an arch of bone. Occasionally she moved or muttered, restless even in her exhaustion. Josef sat by her, setting himself between the child and the crowded room, fervent guardian to her safety. No further harm would come to this, the only surviving child of his murdered friend, if the body and strength of Josef Rosenberg could prevent it; he owed that at least to a lifetime of comradeship and near brotherhood. And more, much more. To the Anatovs he owed his life, his loved ones, his very existence – the least he could do in exchange for so great a debt was to try to preserve this small, damaged flower, the last of their line. Thirty-five years before, Tanya’s grandfather, Count Boris Anatov, had rescued a dying baby from its dead mother’s side on the bitter winter road to Kiev and had brought it to the house of Solomon Rosenberg, his best friend. The elderly childless couple had believed the child a gift from God and the nameless, abandoned scrap had become Josef Rosenberg, a much-loved son, secure within the framework of the two families, a companion to the Anatovs’ own son Alexei, an unlooked-for treasure to bring light and happiness to the Rosenbergs’ old age.

Tiredly Josef rubbed the heels of his hands into his reddened eyes. The atmosphere was thick with smoke, the stench of unwashed bodies and with the unappetizing reek of the cabbage soup which was the only sustenance, with black bread, that the tavern had to offer. The noise was deafening. In one corner a small knot of men gambled, faces avid in the lamplight, the group dominated by a giant of a man in the homespun blouse and dirty, baggy trousers of the Polish peasant, with hands that dwarfed the dice to pea size and a voice like a bull. Josef detested having to bring Tanya into places like this and made a point of avoiding them whenever possible; but tonight the child had been on the brink of pure exhaustion. He had had to carry her for the last difficult mile, together with his other burden. At the thought his hand moved instinctively to the sack, unaware that from across the room a pair of bright, hot eyes had lifted from the dice and were watching him in crafty speculation. Through the rough cloth he felt the reassuringly familiar outline of the wheel. Here was yet another gift from the Anatovs – for in taking him to the Rosenbergs old Boris had not only presented him with loving and devoted parents but with a skill and a livelihood that had, as the years progressed, become a true passion. Diamonds. He allowed himself, fleetingly, to remember a small boy standing by his foster father’s knee watching in wonder the spinning wheel, hearing the sweet note of the singing stone, seeing and envying even then the skill and deftness, the sureness of touch that turned what looked like a small shapeless lump of clouded glass into a piece of living, sparking fire. With delicate accuracy the planes were cut, measured by eye to a fraction of a degree, then polished on the spinning wheel until within the gem the light would glance and gleam, rainbow spears of colour to delight the eye. Often Boris Anatov would be there, watching his old friend at work, for this love of the diamond was one of the things that drew the two men, so disparate in most things, together in unlikely friendship. One of the things. Josef sighed. If it had been only that, if they had not also shared a passionate hatred for injustice and oppression, had not become enmeshed in that dangerous movement that advocated reform and revolution in a country where, Josef was convinced, neither would ever come about, then Tanya Georgievna Anatov would at this moment be safely asleep in her nursery in the lovely old house that had been her home on the estate just outside Kiev and he, Josef, would be sitting downstairs in the house in Charnov Street, quietly with his wife Anna, the children, those little innocent ones martyred for their name and their religion, asleep upstairs—

All gone.

Bitter words, bitter thought, almost impossible to accept even now as the truth. God of my father, where are you now? If you exist, and I pray that you do not, how could you possibly encompass such viciousness, such barbaric cruelty, such mindless horror – not once, but a thousand times? For the carnage of Charnov Street was, Josef knew even in the agony of his own loss, just a small drop in the ocean of the suffering of his parents’ people, the Russian Jews.

His parents’ people.

Why, after all these years, did he still think that? Why, after a lifetime in a Jewish family, after marrying the good, Jewish wife that his foster mother had so desired for him, did he still feel, in the depths of his being, an outsider? Why could he not believe? Why, for all these years, had it been necessary, in gratitude and love, to pretend? Of one thing he was certain – the feeling of alienation had not been simply due to the circumstances of his birth and adoption, nor yet to the fact that he in no way physically resembled the people amongst whom he had lived; it had been rooted deeper than that, somewhere in the darkness of an unbelieving soul that still now denied him the comfort of faith, never revealed to those who loved and cared for him for fear of hurt. Alexei had known – but then, in the intimacy of near brotherhood, Alexei had known everything about Josef Rosenberg. They had shared everything from their thoughts and dreams as boys to their first whore as students in Moscow. Alexei had been Josef’s other, more flamboyant self. He could see him now in the pure lines of the face of the child who was his daughter, in the living halo of her hair, saw his shadow each time he looked into the dark-fringed violet eyes. Alexei, laughing, careless, daredevil who had inherited his father’s passion for revolutionary politics without the old man’s good sense and restraint, and who had been the undoing of them all. Josef knew beyond doubt that the attack on the house in Charnov Street had been instigated and stage-managed by agents of the police and the Imperial government. The Anatovs had had too much influence, were too well regarded and protected upon their own ground – how much more vulnerable were they there in the Jewish quarter of the city, unarmed, unprepared, at a family party celebrating a child’s birthday? How regrettable, people would say, that a family such as the Anatovs should have been caught up in one of those sporadic spasms of Jewish blood-letting that were, if unpleasant, so necessary to the health and well-being of the city of Kiev. But then – a man was known by his friends, was he not? And if he chose to befriend dogs above his own kind, should he be surprised to find himself hunted with them?

Josef thanked the God in whom he could not believe that Solomon and Sarah Rosenberg had been safely at rest for more than a year before the Cossacks had come, laughing, to that neat and prosperous house in Charnov Street, to ravage, to kill and to burn—

A shadow loomed, blocking the light. Josef looked up, eyes still clouded with recollections of that terrible day. The giant who had been dicing with the others in the corner grinned down at him, exposing wolfish teeth. He held out a massive hand in which nestled two ancient bone dice, yellowed with age and worn almost spherical by use.

You like this? His Russian was horribly accented, almost unintelligible.

Josef shook his head.

The other man frowned, jerked the hand that held the dice. You like, he said again, and moved his head towards the corner in which his friends were sitting, grinning, watching the entertaining sideplay. You play. He mimed the rolling of the dice, grinning his canine grin in crafty encouragement.

No, Josef said again, firmly, his eyes steady though his hands were slick with the sweat of anxiety. He had no doubt at all that this Goliath could break him in half with one hand, even less that the other occupants of the room would watch him do it with no concern and little more than a passing interest. No. He looked away, deliberately dismissive. The big man did not move. His huge hand hung level with Josef’s eyes. Josef tried not to look at it, at the callouses, the ingrained dirt, the filthy, bitten nails. His own hand seemed coldly welded to the rough sack beside him. Still the man made no move; his shadow, enormous and somehow threatening, lay across the sleeping child. Josef stiffened, the sickness of fear stirring the pit of his stomach as the huge hand reached towards Tanya, touched the fair, tangled, sleep-damp curls.

Nice, said the Pole in his heavily accented Russian. Pretty.

Josef, very still, lifted his head and watched the other man as he stood contemplating the small, angelic face. The stirrings of terror lifted the hairs of his body. He knew himself not to be a brave man – in their years together at university in Moscow he had never managed to acquire Alexei’s gay appreciation of a good fight, his disregard for physical hurt – but nevertheless he bunched his legs beneath him, ready to launch himself at the giant at the first threat to his sleeping charge. Tanya murmured and turned her head, her fingers curled loosely close to her smooth cheek. She was small for her eight years; asleep she looked younger. Another fearsome grin spread across the man’s face, exaggeratedly sentimental. He said something in his native tongue which Josef did not understand. The man smelled like a pigsty and his breath was foul. At a table not far away an argument had started and a knife flashed. The big hand closed upon the dice, rattled them gently, close to Josef’s ear.

You play. The words were soft, confident. Yes? You have a good time. A man is not a – what? – a nursemaid, no? You play.

I’ve no money.

You win some. The words were coaxing, the bright eyes disturbingly derisive, disbelieving. The Colossus dug his hand into the pocket of his trousers and produced a handful of small coins, rattling them enticingly in his fist as he had the dice. The altercation at the next table rose again. A man stumbled across the floor and cannoned into Josef’s tormentor. He had blood on his face. Without taking his eyes from Josef the big man planted a hand in the man’s chest and shoved him back with the force of a steam hammer the way he had come.

Josef waited, sweating.

The giant watched him with bland eyes and an unfeeling smile.

I’ve no money to gamble, Josef said at last, in desperation.

The man sniffed noisily, cuffed his running nose. One of his friends in the far corner of the room, bored with the lack of action, called impatiently. The hot, speculative eyes watched Josef for a silent moment longer before, with no other word, the man turned and pushed his unceremonious way back across the crowded room to his table. Before he sat down he looked back, once. Josef turned hastily away. When next he hazarded a glance the man was once more intent upon his game. Almost paralysed with relief Josef moved closer to Tanya. Protectively he leaned to the child, tucking the fur jacket closer about her, trying to still the painful racing of his heart. No Alexei to take his part now – nor ever again. Had he been here, Josef found himself wondering, what would he have done? Taken the dice, more than likely, and happily beaten the brute at his own game. Or, depending upon his mood, cheerfully accepted the implicit challenge to violence and proceeded to destroy the tavern stick by stick. Many a man had been misled by that deceptively pretty face and slight build. Roused, Alexei Anatov had not been noted for his restraint. Indirectly it had, in fact, been Alexei’s volcanic disposition that had earned Josef a place at university with him, sponsored and paid for by a Boris Anatov who had hoped – vainly – that the steadier Josef might temper the extremes of his son’s volatile temperament. As if anything or anyone could have done that, Josef thought now, ruefully. Even after Alexei’s marriage to a girl he truly loved, even after the birth of children, the passing of years and the responsibilities of taking over his ailing father’s estate, the blithe recklessness of his youth had never truly left him, neither in action nor speech. And so the intellectual polemic of the father had in the son given way to rash action – and the inevitable end that came upon the blades of the Cossacks in Charnov Street. Blind chance had decreed that Josef should not share the bloody fate of his friends and family, and even now he could not for his life decide if fortune had favoured or duped him. Might it not after all have been better to have died with the others? With Anna and the children, with Alexei and his family. Even old Boris Anatov’s years and standing had not been spared. When, hurrying late from an appointment in the city, Josef had come to the house in Charnov Street after the brutal storm had passed, the old man’s savaged body had been the first he had found. Of the others, those that remained after the flames, he still could not think without sickness. By then the violence, unleashed and uncontainable, had spread through the Jewish quarter and slaughter was everywhere. Ancient fires of hatred had blazed again, endless retribution exacted from a despised race.

But Jesus was a Jew, Josef had pointed out, just once, in argument at the university in Moscow. And He, surely, hated no one. If you believe, as you say you do, how can you think that He would countenance such cruelty perpetrated in His Name?

Watch what you say, bastard Jew, had come the reply. If you want your tongue slit, just take His Name into your filthy mouth once more—

Josef’s decision to flee after the attack on Charnov Street and after he had found the terrified, speechless child in the water butt had been instinctive – but still, now, he believed it to have been right. He had known, had been warned, that Alexei’s – and through Alexei his own – involvement in subversive activities had come to the notice of the authorities. He had no doubt at all as to the motive of the attack. But the violence had not stopped there: others, innocent, had died and Josef Rosenberg, always despite his efforts the outsider, would rightly be held responsible when the community recovered from this latest outbreak. He could expect little help or support from anyone. And Tanya – what of her? She had lost every living relative in the massacre, apart from a distant cousin in Amsterdam. Her father’s estate would undoubtedly be forfeit now that Alexei’s strong arm was no longer there to defend it. The child had been shocked almost beyond reason. Harsh treatment now, Josef was certain, might have deranged her mind for ever. And so, with the small leather bag of rough stones that he had been carrying with him that day and the old tools of his trade that, discarded in favour of new, had been stored almost forgotten in the garden shed, he had taken the child and fled, following that arduous refugee road to the west that had been trodden by so many before them. Had he guessed the enormity of the task of shepherding a young, delicately nurtured mind-sick child across a continent, would he still have attempted it? He looked now at the pale little face and knew beyond doubt that he would, despite the danger and hardship that had brought him more than once to the brink of despair. With little or no money they had had no choice but to face more than a thousand miles of rough country on foot, travelling sometimes alone, or sometimes – as with the gypsies – falling in with a group of travellers for safety’s sake. Josef earned their bread where and when he could along the way. The stones he carried were worth nothing in terms of food, shelter or transport. A Russian or Polish peasant offered these baubles in place of hard cash would scorn the fool who tried it; and, unsure of pursuit and terrified of rousing suspicion, or getting himself arrested and so being forced to abandon Tanya to a lone existence which she would certainly not survive, Josef had avoided the towns where he might have sold one of the small gems. Apart from anything else, as the weeks had passed, the stones had become to him a kind of talisman, a charm of promise for the future. Here lay their fortune – he would not endanger it by forfeiting a single gem. Let them just survive the gruelling present and, in Amsterdam or maybe London, their future was assured. A small business, prosperity, safety – perhaps even complete recovery for poor Tanya. For the moment, with winter advancing fast and the weather worsening by the day, they must endure, keep moving and avoid the dangers of the road.

The thought brought his mind back unpleasantly to the present. He turned his head. The big man who had accosted him earlier was staring across the room through the smoke, eyes narrowed, probing into the dark corner where Josef huddled over Tanya. As Josef watched, one of the man’s companions, a boy pretty enough to be taken for a girl, spoke and laughed uproariously, slapping the table, rattling the bottles and glasses. The giant nodded, smiled briefly. But his eyes across the hazy room were calculating and absolutely mirthless.

They were waiting for him the next day just a few miles along the road. They made not the slightest attempt to hide themselves or their intent. The giant sat upon a stone, elbows on knees, rain-damp towhead lifted, watching the man and child as, they approached, his cronies disposed around him on the muddy grass verge of the track. There was no one else in sight. Josef’s heart took up the steady, heavy beat of fear at the first sight of them, but he walked on unfaltering, Tanya’s hand firmly in his, the sack bouncing on his shoulder. As he drew closer he saw that in one huge hand the man held a rough cudgel which he slapped rhythmically into the vast palm of the other as he sat and waited.

Tanya, frightened, hung back when she saw the men. Josef squeezed her hand reassuringly. Come along, my pigeon. It’s all right.

She shook her head, her feet dragging.

He dropped to one knee beside her, still holding her hand. Don’t be afraid, little one. They won’t hurt us.

Brave words.

She bit her lip and nodded uncertainly. He straightened, braced his shoulders and started forward.

With no words the giant stood and barred the path, the cudgel swinging gently beside him.

Josef stopped. Good day to you. The words were calm, civil, spoken in Russian.

The man smiled his predator’s smile and held out his hand, palm up. Give.

Josef, swallowing, stood his ground, gripping his sack and the child’s hand, knowing himself lost. I have nothing.

The smile faded. The three other men were on their feet now, two behind Josef and the third, the slim, slovenly beautiful young man that Josef had noticed the night before, at his leader’s elbow. "Give," said the man again and took a threatening step forward.

Tanya cringed, whimpering and clinging to Josef’s coat, her huge eyes terror-filled.

Please – don’t frighten the child. There’s no need to frighten the child— Despite his efforts fear threaded Josef’s voice. He heard it himself, and hated himself for it. He gritted his teeth and met the giant’s hot eyes with his own as steadily as he could manage.

The Pole snapped something in his own language. The boy stepped swiftly forward and caught Tanya’s shoulders, trying to drag her away from Josef. She screamed shrilly and fought like a small animal, kicking, spitting, biting, holding like grim death to Josef’s hand.

Josef let drop the sack to reach for her.

Deftly the giant caught it before it hit the ground, upended it, spilled its contents into the mud and pushed them around with an enormous, booted foot. The young man who had grabbed Tanya swore luridly as her sharp teeth sank into his skin. He lifted a hand to strike the child. She screamed again, her breath sobbing in her throat. Before the blow could fall the bandit leader’s huge hand shot out and, with enormous strength simply plucked the sobbing, struggling child from Josef’s grip and tucked her beneath his arm like an oversized doll. His fears for himself forgotten, Josef froze.

Please. Don’t hurt her.

A great, dirty palm was extended, open, waiting. The calculating eyes were unblinking.

We don’t have anything, Josef gestured, his empty hands graphic. I swear we don’t have anything.

Josef’s tools lay at the giant’s feet in the mud. There was no sign of the leather bag. The man pushed the scaithe again, uninterestedly, with a booted toe. Grunted. Thrust forward his hand once more.

"I tell you we don’t have anything!" Frantically Josef began to turn out his pockets, showing them empty of valuables, his eyes on Tanya’s hanging head. The child’s body had gone ominously limp; even the sobs had stopped.

The giant watched Josef’s pantomime of emptying his pockets with unimpressed eyes, snapped an order at the girlish-looking young man. The lad grinned salaciously, stretched filthy, slender hands with long, effeminate fingers and advanced towards Josef. One of his companions laughed, harshly. Josef stood like stone as he was searched slowly, meticulously, painfully obscenely. The long fingers probed, caressed, investigated every likely and unlikely place where valuables might have been concealed, whilst the boy’s companions looked on, laughing and calling encouragement. Like the whore he obviously was, the lad explored Josef’s body, his bright, pretty eyes fixed upon his victim’s face. Josef stood like rock. At last, regretfully, the boy stood back, shaking his head. Tanya moaned a little, tried to move. The big man who held her looked down at her almost in surprise as if the small comedy he had just witnessed had driven the thought of her from his mind. Josef, his face burning with humiliation, raked his numb brain for the Polish words.

Unexpectedly gently the giant set the child on her feet. She staggered from him, then finding herself free she flew to Josef, flinging her arms about him, burying her face in his patched coat. Josef’s arms closed about her, his eyes on the robber leader. The man was gazing thoughtfully at the implements that had fallen from the sack. Curiously he bent to pick up the dop with its rounded heap of solder, the tiny indentation at the top. He regarded it for a moment with puzzled eyes, then tossed it back into the mud. He shifted the big metal wheel once more with his foot, and pounced upon something that was revealed by the movement. Josef’s heart sank. The big man straightened. In his hand he held not the leather bag but Josef’s loupe, his jeweller’s eyeglass, a tiny magnifying glass set in a brass surround and frame. The man held it cradled in the palm of his hand, crafty eyes thoughtful. Then he said something in Polish and reached again for the sack, shaking it, turning it inside out.

The little soft leather bag landed at his feet.

The small sound that Josef made was hardly audible, a simple, swiftly indrawn breath. But the man heard it. He bared his yellowed teeth, danced the bag in the air in front of Josef’s eyes, tutting softly, his eyes dangerous.

Tch, tch. Bad boy, he said in his mangled Russian.

Josef said nothing.

Huge fingers fumbled with the fine leather thong, tore it at last in impatience. The small, dull stones tumbled into a dirt-ingrained palm. The man frowned. This was not what he had expected. Pieces of dirty glass? Of what possible use were they?

And yet—

He glanced at his victim. In the man’s eyes as he looked at the glass-like pebbles was a despair he could not disguise. That was enough. Jan Kopelski was no man’s fool. He tucked the leather pouch into his pocket and then eyed the man and the child, his mind moving with slow deliberation to the next problem.

What to do with them?

The man was whey-faced, the child clinging to him in terror. In truth they made a sorry pair. Behind them Lech the whore, who had just so much enjoyed searching the man, was waiting with bright expectancy on his face, long fingers flexing. For some reason Kopelski felt a spasm of irritation at the naked bloodlust in the boy’s face. Stupid child.

The little girl was weeping softly, helplessly, the great, oddly empty violet eyes drowned in tears.

Never let it be said that Jan Kopelski was not a generous-hearted man; let them live. Why not? The child looked like an unhappy angel – perhaps if he left her unharmed one small candle might be lit somewhere, sometime, for his besmirched soul. Kopelski, nothing if not superstitious, took the thought as an omen. A good deed warmed the heart. Leave them be. They were harmless enough. In all probability they’d die on the road anyway. Let some other son-of-a-whore take the responsibility for that. With a sweep of his arm he gathered his comrades to him. They came, eager for sport.

Leave them, he said, and took malicious pleasure in the disappointment in young Lech’s girlish eyes.

But—

Leave them, I say. They can do us no harm. Come. He turned and strode down the road, knowing his command of them. Reluctantly they followed. At the brow of the hill he turned back. The man had sunk to his knees in the mire, the child clasped in his arms. Even from this distance there was defeat in the bowed shoulders.

Pah! he hawked, spat, considered for a moment going back and finishing the job after all, then shrugged. Why bother? Let the wolves have them.

Chapter Two

AMSTERDAM 1875

The city, on this February evening, was a place of glimmering reflections: the dark, wind-rippled waters of the canals shimmered beneath bridge and wall, never still, mirroring the gleam of lamplight from the tall, gabled houses, glittering in the bitterly cold darkness and creating a deceptive beauty from the narrow, squalid streets behind the city’s waterfront.

Josef Rosenberg, head down against a biting wind that cut through his threadbare coat like a butcher’s new-honed knife, noticed neither the beauty nor, for once, the squalor. He walked fast, blindly, his fury carrying him forward. Turning a corner too fast he slipped on rain-slick cobblestones and cursed in a manner of which he would have been incapable twelve months before. At least, he reflected bitterly, past experience was teaching him something.

Ahead lay the familiar little bridge which crossed a narrow canal to a street where stood a row of dirty tenement houses much frequented by the sea-vagrants of the port. In one of these, to his shame, in an unhealthily damp semi-basement he and Tanya had lived since arriving in Amsterdam a few months before. He slowed his steps a little, fighting for control of a temper which, if slow to kindle, had always been equally slow to die.

Thrown out by a servant! After all he had been through – to be literally thrown from the door of the house of the man upon whom he had pinned his hopes, with no chance to explain himself. He almost choked with mortification to think of it. He could still feel the rough hands on him, still see the sneer on the servant’s face. Out, beggar!

Josef stopped on the bridge, leaned over the crumbling parapet and, sightless and sullen, contemplated the night-dark waters of the canal. Was nothing ever going to go right again? Was this nightmare never to stop? They had survived a massacre, a gruelling journey, attack, theft and – he was certain – near murder. Left bereft and helpless by the vagabond thieves of Poland, they had stubbornly struggled on, step by step, yard by yard, always westward, always somehow keeping hope alive, until at last, against all odds, he had dragged himself and the helpless child to Amsterdam – the goal that in those last terrible weeks on the road had shone before them like a golden beacon in darkness. He uttered aloud a sharp bark of self-mocking laughter, and turned to contemplate with a disenchanted eye the dingy tenements and narrow, unpromising streets that surrounded him. Not for them the wide waterways and pretty, tree-lined avenues of fashionable, prosperous Amsterdam. From the day they arrived their ill-luck had continued to dog them. Even without their precious small store of diamonds Josef had felt reasonably certain that he would be able to find employment in the diamond cutting and polishing centre of Europe. But those last grim weeks on the road had taken a much worse toll than he had realized. To feed Tanya he had himself eaten nothing, to clothe her he had gone all but naked, and his body, unused to privation, had finally rebelled. By the time they had reached the city, in company with a band of players from whom Josef had earned a few coppers helping to set up and dismantle the stage, he had been a very sick man indeed. Their first night had been spent in the open, their second here in the comfortless room in which they still lived, the only accommodation that Josef could afford. By that second night Josef had had a fever, and those first few days in the city were still a confusion in his mind, a nightmare of pain and restless half-sleep punctuated by terrible hallucinations. Amazingly, it had been Tanya who had cared for him then. His few lucid moments had been lit by her sweet smile, tended by her small, careful hands. She had in her gentle way made friends for them amongst the other tenants of the crowded building – the woman on the first floor had donated worn and none-too-clean blankets, the man who worked on the fish quay supplied fishheads for soup, another a few lumps of coal. And Pieter van Heuten – Josef’s brow furrowed a little as the name came to him – had shared his bread and sometimes his ale. For a time the world had seemed a more friendly place. As soon as he was enough recovered, Josef had set out hopefully to look for two things – the house of Tanya’s distant cousins, whom he felt sure would be ready to give the child a decent home again, and work. In the first task he had expected some difficulty, whereas in fact the discovering of the Anatovs’ whereabouts had proved relatively simple; in the second he had expected none and been savagely disappointed.

Amsterdam was not a big city, and it had not taken long to discover the more prosperous centre. It was on the evening of the second day of combing the streets, scanning brass nameplates and letterboxes, that he had, to his delight, found the Anatov offices on the Rokin. The building in which they were situated was magnificent, the nameplate discreet and well polished. Only too aware of his beggarly appearance Josef had hesitated, ineffectually smoothed his hair and then, somewhat apprehensively, had rung the bell.

It was a very long time before the door opened to reveal an obviously astonished young man in high collar and frock coat, his black hair oiled to the sheen of metal, whose supercilious gaze summed Josef up and dismissed him out of hand before he had even opened his mouth. Disparaging eyebrows lifted.

"Wat blieft u?"

I’m – I’m looking for – for Mr Anatov. Mr Sergei Anatov, Josef stammered in his native tongue. At university he had been considered an outstanding student of languages – his English and French were, though rusty, near perfect. However, under present conditions – not too surprisingly – he had discovered that of the Dutch language he could not yet make head or tail.

The superior young man shook his head dismissively, spoke again, briefly, in Dutch and made to close the door.

In an almost involuntary action Josef jammed a desperate foot in the closing gap. Please. Please! I must see Mr Anatov! I have – a little girl— In his anxiety to have himself understood he found himself, ridiculously, raising his voice as if sheer volume might bring comprehension.

The man spoke again, quietly and icily, and with an undisguised threat in his voice that needed no translation. Neither did the expression on the face of the uniformed flunky who answered the young man’s call. Josef stepped back. Mr Anatov, he repeated urgently. "Sergei Anatov. Please." He spoke slowly, willing them to understand.

The door closed sharply in his face. In angry frustration he stared at it.

You’re looking for Anatov?

The voice was young and hard, the words spoken in Russian. The speaker, who had apparently appeared from nowhere, was as unkempt as Josef himself, younger, the face sharp-eyed and bitter.

Yes.

The young man considered. What’s it worth?

Josef shook his head. I have nothing. Wait— This as the youth lifted a nonchalant shoulder and turned away. Josef hunted in his pockets. The day before Tanya had given him a few coins that Pieter van Heuten, the sailor who spent so much time with the child, had given her. Here. I have this. That’s all.

Pah! A dirty finger flicked in disgust.

It’s all I have.

The youth watched him for a moment, speculatively. He put his head on one side, eyes cunning. You got trouble for Anatov? A voracious eagerness threaded the tone and gave Josef, gutter wise now, his cue. Here was a grudge.

Could be, he shrugged.

Then I tell you. That bastard deserves trouble. You going to try to get something out of him?

Josef almost found himself shrugging again, that involuntary, very Jewish gesture that he had intended to shed with his shaved off beard and ingrained way of speech. He had had a lot of time to think of such things. Perhaps.

A short sharp sound that could have been laughter. I wish you luck. It’s the tall red brick house on the east side of the Herrengracht. The one with the black door and the eagle gablestones. Anyone will tell you. Everyone knows the Anatov house. Hey— This as Josef turned away with muttered thanks. A dirty hand extended, the fingers clicking. Josef deposited the coins in the grubby palm. There’s no one there just now, the boy said, in grinning afterthought as he pocketed his profit. They’ve all gone off on some stinking trip. Paid for with other people’s money, of course. The words were vicious.

When will they be back?

God knows. Or the Devil. Ask him.

Josef sighed now, shivered as the wind gusted across the water, sending ripples of yellow light dancing beneath the bridge. Perhaps he should have taken note of the young man’s bitterness. He had found the Anatov house, but as the youth had said it had been locked up and deserted, the shutters firmly closed, not even a servant left to answer the empty ringing of the doorbell. The only thing to do was to wait, watch the house until the family returned and, meanwhile, to find work.

He had reckoned without the trembling hands of deprivation, the disability of his wrecked appearance and his lack of the Dutch language. Time and time again he was turned away, sometimes sympathetically, mostly less so. Not even the influx of gemstones from the new and exciting discoveries in South Africa had made jobs easily come by. No one was going to employ a worker, however skilled he claimed to be, whose hands shook like a drunk’s. No one could be bothered to listen to his pleas and promises in mangled Dutch – they had no need. Skilled men flocked to Amsterdam, men with steady hands and eyes, and with proof of their prowess in handling the precious adamantine stone. The last months had made of Josef a physical wreck, his tall frame weakened and stooping, his brown hair peppered with grey, his eyes red-rimmed and often painful. There was no work for such as he. At last he had to accept the bleak truth and had taken to haunting the docks, begging, accepting any work he could find, eking a living of sorts for himself and the child and praying that when the Anatovs returned to Amsterdam help would be forthcoming, at least for her.

Then at last, yesterday, on one of his regular visits to the Herrengracht, the miracle had happened; there were lights in every window of the house with the eagle gablestones, a bustle of servants, a stream of tradesmen and visitors to the handsome doors. The family were back. Happily he had hurried home to tell Tanya, who for the past few days had been poorly – now, at last, everything would be all right. When the Anatovs saw Tanya, living image of her dead father, surely they could not deny their aid?

Arriving home, he had known the minute he put foot on the doorstep that the child’s cough was worse. He heard it, a racking, painful sound as he hurried down the dank passage to their door. His heart sank – Tanya had had a niggling cough for days, but this was more than a mere childish illness. He opened the door. The slatternly woman known as Bea who lived in the room above with a tribe of children – no two of whom looked alike – was there with Tanya, one of her snivelling, fatherless offspring as always clinging to her dirty skirts. She beckoned to Josef impatiently, speaking rapidly in ill-accented Dutch of which he could understand only one or two words. Tanya huddled on her mattress in the corner, bright flags of fever flying in her cheeks, the racking cough shaking her slight frame every few minutes. The woman fussed around her. Josef sat, helpless, and watched, cursing again the goddess of fortune who baulked him at every turn. His plan had been to take Tanya to the Anatov house, where the sight of her, regardless of relationship, must be certain to melt the hardest heart. Now, looking into the bright, fever-lit eyes, he knew that to be impossible.

And so, this afternoon, he had gone alone.

It had begun better than he had dared to expect; the imposing black door at the top of the steep flight of steps had been opened by a slight, pretty girl in neat dark dress and apron. To his relief, for he had not ventured to hope that the Anatovs would employ Russian staff, she spoke Russian with a strong Ukranian accent, and after