The leader of the pack, with a white blaze on his muzzle, trotted ahead, as if to assure her safe passage. It was a journey they had made thousands of times before.
Even the church, normally dark, was bathed, like everything else, in the glow of the colony lamps; its ancient and damaged cupola shone like a beacon as she approached. People in the old country had often joked that the tops of Russian Orthodox churches looked like onions, but Father Grigori had explained to her when she was a girl that it was meant to represent something holy.
“The dome is shaped like a candle flame,” he had told her, pointing to the top of the imperial chapel at Tsarkoe Selo. “It is meant to light our way to Heaven.”
If only she could believe that. If only, Anastasia thought, she could find such a pathway. Oh, how fast she would climb it, bad foot or no.
But as God had not seen fit to show her the way, and eternal damnation awaited those who attempted to thwart His will by their own hand, all she could do was submit herself and pray for deliverance.
For now, she took leave of the wolves and passed through the secret door that led to her private chamber. Bolting the passageway behind her, she settled her aching bones into this last tiny refuge. Resting the lantern beside her hand, she closed her eyes and willed herself back to other times and other places. Sometimes it was the royal retreat in the Crimea, sometimes it was the garden of the Alexander Palace. Always it was with her family. Like a woodland creature hibernating for the winter, she would enter into a suspended state, a dreamlike trance from which she hoped never to awaken.
And yet, fight it as hard as she might, she always did. The next night, or maybe the one after that, she always found herself awake again, walking the cliffs, lantern in hand and heart as heavy as a millstone.
Chapter 68
Poking his head out of his tent, Slater knew there was simply no way to cross the grounds to the church without being spotted. The colonel plainly believed in lots of lights, all the time.
Slipping his field pack onto his back—one thing he’d learned was to keep his basic supplies, from first-aid kit to syringes on him at all times—he checked his watch. It was just before midnight, and after waiting as a lone sentry stomped across the grounds and off toward the main gate, he sauntered out of the tent, walking briskly between the tents and bivouacs and around the old well. It was a clear night, but frigidly cold—when wasn’t it?—and made worse by a biting wind. Even beneath all his thermal gear, he had to fight back a shiver.
He gave the church a wide berth, swinging wide and keeping to what cover he could, before doubling back to the northern wall. So far, there was no further sign of the night patrol.
Nor was there any sign of Sergeant Groves or Kozak, either … until he heard a low whistle and turned to see them both huddled in the breach of the stockade wall. The professor carried a shovel and Groves had liberated a pickaxe. Waving them over, Slater grabbed the professor by the shoulder and said, “So where’s this crawl space?”
Kozak, moving faster than a man of his girth usually moved, scuttled to a spot a few yards away, got down on his knees, peered at the base of the church, pawed at the snowy ground, and whispered, “Under here—it should be right under here.”
“It should be, or it is?” Slater said.
“It is! It is!”
Groves didn’t need any more instruction than that. He muscled them both aside, and swung the pickaxe at the ground. Fortunately, the dull clang of the blade on the hard ground was muffled by the gusting wind. After several strokes, he paused to let Kozak shovel the loose soil and snow away.
“Yes, yes, it’s here!” Kozak said. “A few more strikes!”
Groves wielded the pickaxe while Slater, crouching, kept watch. When he was done, Kozak quickly brushed the debris aside—slivers of timber and sawdust were mixed with the snow and ice—and ran his flashlight beam back and forth. “Frank!” he urged. “Come!”
Slater reached into his field pack and withdrew the scabbard that housed a nine-inch surgical knife; it wasn’t often that he had had to use the knife, but once or twice emergency amputations had had to be performed. If its broad blade could saw through bone, he assumed it would do perfectly well with wood.