A muffled yes sounded. “Keep holding on.” I looked back. Dmitri was nowhere in sight. I pulled the horse up. “Dmitri!” I yelled. There wasn’t any answer.
“Where are they?” Nika cried.
“Hold on. I’m going to let you off at the house and then I’ll go look for him.”
I dropped her off with the others. Both twins were crying. I thought about telling Hap and Miles what to do if I didn’t come back and then I decided I was coming back, no matter what.
I turned the horse around and galloped back toward the train. I came up over a hill and saw Dmitri walking toward me, leading his horse. He didn’t look hurt, but I urged the horse to go faster.
When I reached him, I swung down and flung myself at him. “What happened?”
“The horse stepped in a hole and went down. It’s lame. You shouldn’t have come back.”
“Of course I came back. We’re not going to leave you behind.”
He hugged me and then stepped back. I didn’t like the solemn look on his face. I’d hoped I’d been wrong, but I knew what that look meant.
“I know what you are going to say,” I told him. “I suppose I’ve known all along you wouldn’t come with us, so you don’t have to give me any explanations. You’re going back to join up with the Cossacks, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “They know where there are some other regiments forming that I can join.”
I leaned my head against the horse’s neck, feeling the warmth against my face.
Dmitri pulled me away from her, drawing me back into his arms as he whispered, “I’m sorry. I have to do this.”
“I know.” I felt a tear run down my face.
The horse turned her head and bumped me, blowing out her breath.
“I think she wants a treat,” I said, trying to get control of myself, trying to talk about nothing to stretch out the moment.
“She deserves it after that run, but she’ll have to wait a bit,” Dmitri said.
He took the gold ring off his finger and then placed it in my hand. “I wish I had something else to give you to remember me by,” he said. “But at the moment I only have this.”
I looked down at it and then at him. I didn’t know what he meant by giving it to me. To cover my confusion, I said, “It looks old.”
He smiled. “It is old. The bird on it is a falcon, the symbol of the Sokolov name. Someday I will have a ring made just for you, and it will be of a firebird.” He twirled a strand of my hair in his fingers. “That should be the symbol of you, Charlotte Danielovna. You bring light where there is darkness.” He put his hand on mine and closed my fingers around the ring and kissed me, just once and not for long enough.
“After the war, you’ll know where to find me,” he said. “Send a message to my house in Petrograd and I will meet you anywhere you say. If you don’t want to come back to Russia, I’ll meet you in America.”
“I’ll find you,” I said as I put the ring in my pocket. “And I’ll keep the ring, but I don’t need it to remember you.”
He kissed me again. “I know, but it will make me happy to think of you with it.”
I took a deep breath and then put my horse’s reins in his hands. “You take her. I’ll take the lame one.”
A squeaking sound came from his bag. Dmitri opened it up and pulled out the kitten. “I’d better leave Musya with you or the twins will come after me.”
I took the kitten and held it close, feeling its heart beating.
“Someday we’ll ride together again, Charlotte Danielovna,” Dmitri said, swinging himself up in the saddle. “And you’ll teach me how to juggle.”
I smiled, though the tears were still running down my face. “Goodbye, Dmitri Antonovich.” I turned and led the horse away. I knew Dmitri was watching me but I didn’t look back, not then. I couldn’t.
When I joined the others, I put a smile on my face and handed the kitten to Nika. “Let’s go,” I said. “We’ll meet up with Dmitri later.” I held up my hand to stop the questions. “And we’ll talk later. We need to get somewhere warm.”
The others went ahead of me and I let myself look back then. Dmitri had ridden to the top of the hill and was watching us. He raised his hand. I took the ring out of my pocket and put it on my finger, then raised my hand too.
“We’ll be back,” I whispered. “We’ll be back.”
Notes
Like all writers of historical fiction, I found it a challenge to decide what to include in this story and what to leave out. Writing a book set during the Russian revolution viewed from the eyes and knowledge of an American girl meant I had to narrow my focus to a short time frame and a small fraction of what was a very turbulent and complicated series of events over a long span of time. Years of oppression of the Russian people preceded the revolution, and many factions were involved, some working for their own interests, and others for the interests of the country. I couldn’t include the whole history of these events, but I hope what I did include will give readers an understanding of a tiny part of it. Some of the actual time line is condensed by a few weeks for purpose of the narrative.
I chose to make the main character an American who wants to belong to a place even though she is considered a foreigner there because I had a friend in college who went through a similar experience. He’d lived abroad most of his life, and coming to the United States to attend college had him questioning what the concept of home really meant.
Many of the characters in Gone by Nightfall were inspired by actual people.
Dmitri Sokolov, the Russian tutor, was inspired by a man named Nicholas Wreden, who wrote about his experiences in The Unmaking of a Russian many years after he escaped from Russia and became the editorial director at a publishing company, E. P. Dutton.
Charlotte Mason was inspired by two different young women, one British and one American. Meriel Buchanan was the daughter of the British ambassador to Russia and lived there for many years, at one point falling in love with a young Russian duke, who eventually broke off the relationship when his father forbade him to marry a girl who was not Russian. The American girl, Miriam Jones Artsimovitch, came to Russia at nine years old when her mother divorced her father to marry a Russian aristocrat. Miriam did end up marrying the Russian baron she fell in love with, eventually reuniting with him in France. Both girls had harrowing escapes from Russia.
Meriel Buchanan wrote several books about her time in Petrograd, including Petrograd, the City of Trouble, 1914-1918 and Ambassador’s Daughter.
Unfortunately there is no book written about Miriam Artsimovitch, but I pieced together her story through newspaper articles and mentions of her in other books. I have more information about her on my website.
Charlotte’s mother has died by the time the book begins, but she was inspired by an American woman who went by a few different first names, including Lilie and Madeline. I don’t think either of those names is on her birth certificate. Lilie/Madeline grew up in rural Iowa, the daughter of a grain-elevator operator. After some earlier marriages that ended in divorce, she married a Russian count and was involved in quite a bit of the intrigue surrounding the Russian imperial court. Part of her story is told in The Countess from Iowa by Countess Nostitz (Lilie de Fernandez-Azabal).