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  My brother’s door was ajar. Softly as I could, I pushed it open, peeked inside.

  He was still awake, sitting in a chair at the hearth, trying to read a letter by the fading fire.

  ‘Otomars,’ I whispered.

  He looked back at me, the lines of exhaustion on his face. ‘Yes, Wiktor?’

  I stepped into the room, felt the welcome heat of the hearth and china boiler in the corner. ‘Anne is downstairs crying.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Tears of joy,’ he said without conviction. ‘She’s agreed to marry Erich.’

  I felt something painful well up inside me, a tightening in my throat. ‘And Albrecht Meer?’

  It took a moment for him to catch my meaning. Then he nodded. ‘As destitute as us.’

  Otomars motioned me over to his chair. ‘Wiktor, our lives are going to change, you know that, yes?’ He folded up the letter. ‘Without insurance, there is no home, and there will be no harvest next autumn. Father’s debts will mount.’

  ‘But the year after?’

  ‘The banks won’t wait.’ He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘And Anne’s dowry? Much of the estate will go to the Kaltenbachs, more than a normal dowry.’

  I stared at him, not understanding.

  ‘The baron does nothing for charity, Wiktor. He’s wanted our land for years.’ Otomars squeezed my shoulder with his thick fingers. ‘I don’t want you to become a Kaltenbach child. Work for them, run errands for their businesses until you begin officer training, but remember the Rooks name is yours, Rooks blood is in your veins.’ He looked me squarely in the face. ‘We have to start again. You and me, we’re the hope.’

  My eyes drifted to the floor. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good.’

  I let out a weary breath. Officer training, he’d said it. For the Baltic Barons, the first sons ran the estate, the seconds went into the military, or, if faint of heart, the clergy. But I had always wanted to go to university, to study the sciences. How could I ask Father for the tuition now?

  And, my brother, so exhausted and sullen, without his birthright what would he do? ‘Where will you go?’ I asked.

  Otomars glanced down to the half-folded letter. He stripped off the address at the top. ‘St. Petersburg,’ was all I caught, before he tossed the rest into the fire.

  ‘I have an offer of employment.’

  *****

  I leaned against the arm-thick mooring line, comfortable I would not slip and plunge off the wharf to the grayish Daugava River below. I had an invoice to deliver to the ship’s captain, but he was taking his good time to appear on deck. Across the pier, I watched the newest refugees arrive and shove themselves in between those who had spent the night on the Riga dockyards. Russians, Jews, gypsies, Estonians, Latvians all in the thousands. So many revolts had occurred in the previous year, so many people now were on the run from the tsar’s justice. They clogged every inch of the harbor waiting for passage to Britain, the Americas, or anywhere outside of the Russian Empire.

  I knew many among them were revolutionaries, murderers, or thieves. Like the ones our family had faced. Not that they wore signs that said: ‘Traitor.’ To the eye, they just looked like weary travelers; hungry, exhausted, seeking somewhere, anywhere to lie down on the planks of the teeming docks.

  This was the hardest concept to grasp, how the mask of innocence played on our sympathies. Like that Estonian family across from me: a crying baby, the father missing a leg, the mother hobbled by some crippling disease. They didn’t appear threatening. But I asked myself, how did he lose that leg? What crime might have he committed? Or this tall Jew near the seawall, shading his tiny pregnant wife and sunburnt son. Could they possibly be an enemy? Or those three Russian youths camped underneath the crane: too young to be dangerous now, but what will they be like in five years? Ten? If they’re really loyal Russians why were they bound for other lands?

  A middle-aged man, bald, clean-shaven wearing a thick weather-scarred overcoat walked down the gangplank from the cargo bay. He stopped and looked at me, balanced against his line.

  ‘Are you from Kaltenbach Works?’

  ‘Captain Skujenes?’ I asked. ‘I’ve got a letter for you. The bill for the parts you ordered.’

  He took it, opening the envelope in front of me. He ran down the list checking against the charges he expected. As he did, we chatted about his journey from Oslo, how harsh the storms had been, and what he planned on doing ashore. He was a Lett, and I was thrilled that he hadn’t mentioned my accent. Months of running errands for the Kaltenbach companies, foraying alone into the Lettish world with instructions from the bosses, had increased my Latvian speech remarkably. Maybe these damnable Letts could no longer detect a hint of German when I spoke their language.

  At last I commented on the crowds marooned here waiting for passage, extending my vocabulary to the fullest.

  ‘It’s good they’re leaving,’ the captain replied, folding up the invoice.

  ‘I agree.’ I was glad someone else recognized the danger of these foreigners.

  ‘Latvia is for the Latvians, Kraut.’

  Part Two:

  Lacplesis’s Men

  Chapter Five

  Summer, 1915

  My mare whinnied as I turned toward the voices echoing up from the alleyway. These narrow Riga streets were a poor place to ride a horse and now clogged with noxious fumes, both man and animal panted to take in enough air.

  The sounds repeated. Soldiers definitely, soldiers close by, but this heavy smog smothered my world, clipped my vision to a few short meters. These men could be inside a nearby building, lost off a side street, or deeper in the alleyway. There was no way to tell.

  A remorseful sigh, another burning breath, the greasy air slithering down my raw throat. There was one certainty, however: the German army was coming. Their artillery shells rained down on the city: collapsing abandoned wharfs, caving in walls, opening up craters in the muddy streets. Defeat after defeat this summer had made it inevitable. They’d be here by tomorrow. The Russians were doing what they had always done: backing up. Their one advantage, they could retreat for half the globe.

  As an officer in the tsar’s army my responsibility was to remove anyone of value from the area. Anyone who could operate machinery, sew a uniform, plow a field. Personal experience proved it was easier if we took the whole family and let them be sorted out farther from the front. It seemed half of the population of Latvia, having never left sight of their homes, was being moved thousands of kilometers into the heart of Russia.

  Whether they liked it or not.

  In theory my orders were simple, get the workers onto the carts to haul them away. If they would not be moved, shoot them so the Germans couldn’t enlist them. In reality, this meant I rode about on a horse admonishing soldiers, stopping assaults, interrupting rapes. Looting, I slowly learned, was best ignored. The Russian army was disintegrating, deserters in the thousands. Those who stayed expected additional compensation. It was understood, if unsaid.

  On the city’s main roads carts passed loaded with pale families, awakened and confused. An hour ago, asleep in their beds, now with one bag for all of them bound for places they couldn’t even name. Most had never been farther east than Wenden.

  These carts were often forced aside by speeding wagons full of machine parts, barrels of oil, wooden tubs of grease. The Russians were getting everything of value out.

  And burning everything else. The fields outside the city last night were a turbulent sea of flame, crests of fire crashing together, breaking apart, only to be surmounted by the next, higher wave. Today the dockyards and factories were being torched. A coal black mountain had risen south of the city, dwarfing everything even the tower of St. Peter’s church. The sun could not penetrate it and it was chilling in the heart to know that as I looked south onto this mountain shroud, our enemies must now be spying it across the river Daugava.

  Mass burning had a different scent than
the hearth, the variety of aromas was a terrible thing: scorched metal, vaporized refuse, old timbers, it was too much for the brain to process, and left me with a dull constant headache.

  Two old Latvians, well past the age where they earned a cart space, shoved their way along the wall, fearful of being trampled by my horse, even more afraid that I would bark the command ‘Halt.’

  I tried not to have sympathy for them. These Letts had taken away everything our family possessed and had killed something inside my father. Yet, by circumstance I had spent many years on these docks running errands for the Kaltenbach family companies, working among the common Latvians. I had learned their language, understood a little more of Lettish thinking. There were a few good fellows in their numbers and, even if their brutish ways were unforgivable, I could privately admit that their open hatred for the Baltic Barons was not completely without warrant.

  And, of course, they were the only men in the Russian army who really seemed to want to fight for Latvia. Admirable, given the way everyone else was falling back.

  The throaty, rigid scream of an older man joined the chorus of younger voices. It echoed up from one of those small Riga courtyards boxed in on three sides by apartment walls, the fourth entered by an archway low enough that it required me to duck on horseback. Inside, two soldiers stood, while a third harshly ejected a tenant from his doorway. Elderly, he collapsed onto the ground.

  I gained their attention with a guttural shout, quickly dismounted and approached the nearest. Closed in, the air could not escape and the oppressive summer heat thickened. A sauna full of singeing gas and smoke, clinging moisture collected beneath my uniform and sweat ran tickling across cheeks and nose.

  ‘What is the situation, Corporal? Report.’

  He seemed flustered to see an officer, the others eyeing me timidly, waiting for his cue on how to react. They were all near my age, twenty, the corporal perhaps slightly older.

  ‘Well, sir…’ he paused to read my rank in the dense atmosphere. The smoke devoured illumination in these back-alley courtyards. ‘Lieutenant? This man is a machinist, sir. We were going to move him.’

  ‘He would move better if you hadn’t thrown him to the ground.’ I gave the soldier a disapproving glance and approached the man who was picking himself up off the gravel. Then with a turn: ‘Where is your sergeant? Corporal…?’

  ‘Korovnikov. Corporal Korovnikov. Our sergeant, he’s gone off, sir. We’ve been on our own here for two days.’

  ‘There are many troops about, why haven’t you found another commander?’

  ‘See, sir… the thing is Lieutenant…he won’t go.’

  Not an answer, he had avoided the question. Why?

  A woman’s scream from above, somewhere something glass shattered.

  I started. ‘Who is up there?’

  ‘One of our boys is getting out the last of the Latvians. They’ve been resisting.’

  I’d seen this too much in the past few days. ‘Get him down and the girl.’

  The corporal grimaced and gave a nod to one of the privates. He entered the building. A few moments later he exited with a sobbing adolescent girl and another Russian soldier. He couldn’t have been seventeen. She was younger.

  ‘What is your name, Private?’ Somewhere an artillery shell exploded.

  ‘Rezanov, Captain.’

  ‘Lieutenant,’ I pointed to my insignia. ‘Lieutenant Wiktor Rooks. And your other names, Private?’

  ‘Dmitry Valentinovych , sir.’ He avoided my eyes. His face was flush with heat, his head unadorned, moisture dripping down his closely shorn scalp.

  ‘Dmitry Valentinovych. Private Dmitry Valentinovych Rezanov.’ I said the name slowly, making it clear I was branding the name in memory.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The corporal stepped forward, eclipsing my view of the boy. His tone sheepish: ‘Is there a problem Lieutenant?’

  I kept my voice even, business like: ‘Private Rezanov is a rapist, Corporal. I want you to watch him.’ I looked at the others: ‘And you two escort this man to the main road so we can get him on a cart, I’ll take the girl.’

  They didn’t move. One of the privates yelled out, ‘You don’t know…it’s not true!’

  I looked at the girl: Thirteen? Fourteen? Amber-haired, scratch marks on her cheek and neck, green dress torn across the shoulder. I knew. I watched the boy, accused of rape by an officer, his only response silence, trembling, looking at the ground. He knew too. If we were lucky, if she were lucky, he was the only participant.

  She sobbed and tried to embrace the machinist. He avoided her eyes, kept her at arm’s distance, stoically pushed her away. She collapsed to the cobblestones hysterical. Like the heat, these walls wouldn’t let her cries escape. Again and again they echoed.

  Corporal Korovnikov came forward. ‘You see Lieutenant, I know what he done was wrong, but… well, he didn’t have to stay. None of us did. I mean you got to understand we could die when the Germans...’

  ‘He ain’t never experienced a lady,’ repeated the other private.

  ‘Corporal, I want you to take Private Rezanov’s gun and bayonet, and have your two privates escort this man to the main road, so we can put him…’

  ‘I won’t go.’ The machinist grew suddenly animated, yet his voice stayed firm, just able to penetrate the sounds of the crying girl. ‘This is our home. Jelena and I have got no reason to live in Russia. We live here, sir. Please.’

  These times were too dangerous for sympathies: ‘It’s for your own protection.’

  ‘Sir, begging your pardon, but the Germans have never done nothing to me. Your men ransacked my home, attacked my daughter. I would be best unprotected by you.’

  The corporal broke in, ‘See! He won’t go sir. Now orders are that we can shoot him, so the enemy don’t get him. We’ve been trying to convince otherwise, but if they won’t budge, well, what Dmitry did really won’t matter.’

  ‘We’re going to escort them to the road, not shoot them. Are my orders clear Corporal?’

  He looked at his men. One put a comforting arm on Private Rezanov’s shoulder. The corporal came back with the tone of a strained negotiator: ‘Clear, sir. It seems you’ll bend the rules for these Latvians, while being awfully hard on your own men. Don’t you think?’

  Even in the sweltering heat and thick haze I could see the challenge.

  ‘What is your full name, Corporal?’

  He paused for a long time looking uncomfortably at the wall, then finally directly at me. His words started as a whisper, but gained volume with resolve: ‘I’d rather keep that to myself, sir.’

  Rezanov and the two others moved up behind him. Their rifles rising…

  I shouted in his face: ‘I want your name, I want Private Rezanov’s rifle, and I want that man escorted to the road.’ I willed him to respond. Without rank, without command, I was one against four strangers in a smoke-filled back alley.

  A resolute frown from the corporal: ‘He won’t leave. Orders are to shoot him. Seems that you are the one ignoring orders, Lieutenant. That kinda invalidates your command.’

  The guns went off, the machinist fell dead. Before I could move Corporal Korovnikov had bayoneted me in the lower intestines. He ripped it low, hooking my pelvis bone before pulling it out. There was no pain, only a hard, uncomfortable tugging inside. The last thing I remember was the girl’s screams as my shoulder slumped against the wall and all went dark…

  Chapter Six

  Autumn, 1915, Livland

  For three months I lay on a tiny cot in the army hospital with all my possessions packed in a trunk underneath me. The surgery had gone well, though I had lost a few centimeters of colon and taken some liver damage. The bayonet scar was hideous: like a huge fossilized centipede running from pelvis to stomach, but all in all the physical damage would soon subside.

  It was my mind that worried. I replayed that morning over and over again, probing for alternative actions, imagining different endings. How had the
se men turned on me? How had my orders been refused? Why had I been stabbed?

  As a child, I had always taken comfort in the natural order of things. A falsity. Our servants had turned on our family. These troops had turned on me. Was there anything I could trust? Anything, anyone who would do what was supposed to be done? Did I need to be kinder to earn respect? Or harsher? Was I too weak to lead?

  It was a long three months. I tried not to think of the girl in the green dress or her father’s execution. I rationalized that I hadn’t failed them. These troops had betrayed them, as they had me. I said that every night before sleep. Told myself it wasn’t a lie.

  I’d given a report on the attack shortly after the surgery. A man in a tan uniform had filled out a form and promised investigation. I’d heard nothing more. I imagined the paper sitting in some mammoth inbox within an office abandoned from the war.

  In the first month I had dreams that those men had found me here and snuck into the hospital to finish their work. I awoke in cold sweats. Apparently, I also spoke German in my sleep. A man with a head injury declared me an enemy spy, shouting out to the whole room his discovery. The nurse sedated him, and he was soon moved to a different ward. Nothing more came of it, but his accusations made me paranoid, fitful, afraid to embrace slumber. While my body healed, my mind became nervous, chronically exhausted.

  Mostly, I sat. Sat and tried to make sense of everything. Sat and felt my belly tighten, and listened to the Russian nurse tell me this was a good thing. There was nothing to read, only an old copy of Chekhov’s collected works and the Latvian poet Blaumanis’s odes to country living. Both books soon disappeared. The room had a phonograph, but someone always needed rest. It was never turned on.

  News of the war drizzled in. Miraculously, the German advance had been stopped somehow. Riga had not capitulated. As autumn approached, there was even talk of an offensive. I perceived a pressure to deem everyone healthy. The doctors pried and pressed my tender stomach, weighed me twice a week. Intestinal wounds could take months to reveal that a body was poisoning itself. No matter how they wanted to be rid of me, nor strong my desire to be off this cot, everyone had to wait.