Escape to Constantinople

Most of the cadets around them were too tired to notice. Those who did notice merely thought that Vasily was doing what he had done every night in the barracks to anyone he pleased to master—by the right of the strongest. Three or four moved close to watch, savoring what Vasily was doing to the young nobleman. Many of the others wanted to do the same to him—and now that he’d been taken by one of them, might also get their chance. While Vasily fucked Pyotr, others passed the compliant Mikhail around—to one, by one, satisfy their own lust.

Vasily was grinning when Pyotr opened his eyes in the sunlight of the third day, thinking that he was the first who had fully had the finely formed third son of a prince, and a groaning Pyotr said nothing to disabuse him of that thought. Vasily had taken him more than once in the night and had whispered in his ear that he would keep on doing so as long as they were on the road.

Thus, Pyotr had the first happy thought for weeks when he saw that they were entering an urban area and one of the cadets, who have come from the south, said he thought they were entering Novorossiysk.

The happy thought evaporated, however, as they approached the wharf on the Black Sea.

Chapter Two: The Docks of Novorossiysk

A cheer had gone up along the line of trucks as the convoy conveying the cadets of the Imperial Military Academy weaved down the tail end of the Caucasus Mountains spilling into the sea at the eastern edge of the Novorossiysk harbor. From the mountains, Novorossiysk looked welcoming, with its sparkling beaches and the sun glinting off the onion-shaped dome of the Russian Orthodox church dominating the town’s main square.

Even the view of the teaming mass of people on the town’s wharf was heartening until the trucks grew closer and it could be seen that this wasn’t the expected massing of the soldiers of General Kothak’s army that the cadets were to join up with, but a huge surge of refugees trying to get onto the ships in the harbor to take them on to the Crimea Peninsula, two hundred miles off in the distance to the east across the glassy-surfaced sea. The Crimea was one of the few bits of Russia that was still held by the White Army and represented freedom and security to the adherents of the tsar.

Kothak’s couriers had told the academy head that the cadets were to meet up with his army at the wharfs, but it was obvious before the convoy had even entered the town that a connection was improbable amid the chaos they could see down there in the harbor. The convoy stopped in the town square, and the cadets and faculty jumped out of the trucks to stretch their legs as a party of faculty members that included Grigory Orlov went on to the harbor to try to meet up with Kothak’s staff. They returned shortly with long faces, and Pyotr overheard them reporting to the academy head.

“Kothak has already shipped his forces on to the Crimea,” Orlov reported. “He says that the Bolshevik forces coalescing here are too strong for the White Army to hold Novorossiysk. He advised that the cadets should board the ships down there and join the White Army forces in Sevastopol.”

“Down there? Through that teeming crowd?” The cadet, Mikhail Shevemetev, standing beside Pyotr and Vasily within hearing distance of the faculty members had been the one who had blurted that out.

“We can cut our way through that mob,” Vasily boasted, looking almost ecstatic at the prospect.

Orlov drifted over to them, and speaking directly to Pyotr in a low tone, said, “Keep close to me. There are two ships down there that we’ve arranged to board. I want you on the same ship I take, near me.”

Vasily gave him a dirty look and made sure that Pyotr was at his side as they boarded the trucks again to descend to the harbor.

The crowd was too thick, panicked, and crazed eyed for the trucks to have any hope of managing to part a path to get to the docks without stalling out on a pile of bodies, so they stopped at the edge of the wharf square and the cadets climbed down, formed a close wedge, and plowed their way into the melee.

It wasn’t just people that impeded their progress. The refugees had brought far more of their precious possessions than they would ever be permitted to carry with them onto the ships. It was clear to all that the cargo on the ships would be elbow to elbow people, not possessions, even though over the heads of the crowd, Pyotr could see an ornate grand piano that was being manhandled up a gangplank—only to teeter briefly and then to fall into the choppy waters between the side of the ship and the quay.

As the cadets’ wedge parted the ways in its journey toward the two ships now at the quay—and a third standing just off the docks and using a flatboat to ferry passengers out to the ship, refugees began to attach themselves to the sides and the back of the wedge, using the cadets to draw nearer to their goal of freedom.

Women were fighting valiantly to keep their babies and young children above the thrashing legs and feet of others—not always successfully—and there was a wailing of grief and loss floating above the heads of the crowds. Pyotr watched in horror as one woman, having dropped her baby, went under the feet of the throng herself in search for it, both—possibly mercifully—to be trampled to death. He had no time to think on this, though, as another woman was pulling at a sleeve, crying out for his protection in exchange for a jeweled tiara she was holding out in her hand. A hand from the crowd, reached out and grabbed the tiara, though, and it and the woman disappeared from Pyotr’s vision as Vasily and Orlov pushed him along.

Pyotr wondered why there were only three ships in the harbor. He could see the masts of several others standing off the harbor. When he pointed these out to Orlov as they shuffled along, Orlov spat in derision. “Those are the ships of the Allies—the British, French, Italians, and Americans. They are sitting out there just to observe and report. If they support the imperials at all, it is only with their lips.”

“But there’s one moving toward us, into the harbor now,” Pyotr said. “A huge man-of-war.”

“The biggest would be the HMS Cardiff, the British flagship,” Orlov answered. “The next largest would be the Americans’ USS Galveston. I was told of them when I was here earlier hoping to meet up with Kothak’s couriers. I don’t know which that one would be.”

Pyotr’s attention returned to the wharf. He saw, over the top of the crowd, an elaborately carved carriage making better headway than they were from another direction in the square. Here the masses of people were making a path, in awe, for the progress of the carriage in a manner that they had shown no willingness to do for the academy’s trucks.

He realized he recognized the men in the box of the carriage—and that, therefore, he knew who was inside the carriage.

“It’s Olga,” he cried out in recognition.

“Who?” Vasily, who was in front of him in the wedge, with Orlov behind him and Mikhail off to the side somewhere.

“The Grand Duchess Olga. My father’s cousin, sister to the tsar. The people love her; that’s why they are making way for her carriage.”

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