Klara

Chapter 1

The summons came at midday, with my beloved Babouchka entering my rooms in her stiff, crenellated skirts.

“The matchmaker has arrived, my lady.”

I remained, unmoving, on my window seat, watching scurrilous droplets run down the windowpanes.  The glass felt cool on my forehead, numbing my thoughts as the light wrapped me softly in her muted shades of grey.

-“I will be down directly”, I replied without inflection.

-“of course my lady”, said Babouchka.  As she turned to walk away, she paused for a moment, took a deep breath and added, “this is such a wonderful opportunity my lady… the matchmaker will give you the entrees you need to make the best possible match.  There is nothing more I could have wished for you!” 

She crossed the floor and sank to her knees in front of my window seat, and taking my hand in hers, she raised her eyes solemnly to mine.

-“Please try…won’t you try my Klara, my belle?”

Although it was unusual for a servant to be so forthcoming with her mistress, Babouchka had been with me since my birth, and remained steadfastly by my side as I watched first my father, then my mother succumb to the crushing finality of death.  She was dearer to me than any.

            But I could not bring myself to hope; there was to be no happiness for me. I felt it in my bones.  As a young girl I grew up cocooned in the warmth of my family, never dreaming that a day may come that would shatter it all. 

My sister Sofia Natalia, four years my junior, and Dmitri three years hers, would follow behind me as I explored the woods and streams of Liliya Kholm, our Estate outside of Saint Petersburg.  Together we would play Tsar Peter against the Turks, and the Cossacks against the Japanese, enlisting small armies of peasant children to take up our banner.  In our childhood fantasies, no person nor power could destroy the greatness of Russia.

            On hot summer days Papa would take us in the boat and row us out over the lake, and sing to us the haunting melodies of our motherland.  Although a titled Count, Papa was a soldier at his heart.  He had fought hard during the disastrous Russo-Japanese war, and had badly injured his leg.

What we could never understand as young children, but which was to later play a defining role in each of our lives, was that the war with Japan was a failure, and Papa, as one of its higher ranking commanders, was brought low for it. 

The Tsar had had dreams of controlling a year round naval port.  Our own Vladivostock was closed to the ice for a near quarter each year, but if our Navy could secure Port Athur, the motherland could then spread her imperial influence without break.  As Queen Victoria’s grandsons, first Tsar Peter and then Tsar Nicholas attempted her imperialist policies, only where Victoria saw success, Russia saw only defeat. 

It wasn’t overt at first, but slowly as the battle failures mounted, fewer parties were held, and invitations dried up.  Although an old and esteemed house, the family Dashkova had been tainted by dishonour.

Papa returned to my mother, sister, and I with a cane and a limp, and his honour but a scrap on the soles of his tattered boots.  Though to us there could be no sweeter sight, and we welcomed him home as the hero we believed him to be.   

And so the five of us, together with my grandmamma, insulated ourselves in the country for a near decade of happy seasons. 

But the peace was not to last, and the war of all wars swept into our lives like a tide that knows no ebb.  Germany had declared war, one which Russia had been preparing for by building up her arms manufacturing.  The entire country had been swept up in the early fervor, but to us in our isolation only small quips from the local peasants alerted us children that anything was wrong.