Blood Pheasant

Prologue

“Unlike the common pheasant, the blood pheasant is monogamous. They begin their courtship by flying at each other breast-to-breast, biting wattles, and leaping up to kick to the other’s beak.” -Dr. Harriet Thorne, Spring 2014 issue of Berkeley Natural Science Compendium

1920 Ural Mountains, Siberia   

They drag our neighbor through the street in her white nightgown, her arms flying, her braids swinging like hanged men. The street lamp has reached its last drops of kerosine, so the light flickers on and off as the men in long coats hoist her onto a Soviet truck. We see her in flashes like a moving picture gone off its spool.

“Mamma,” Varvara whispers. “Will they send her to the camps?” I nod, and we lock eyes. I place my finger over my lips to silence her. 

What did Svetlana do? Hide a wedding vase or sack of flower not yet crawling with weevils? Now, as she pleads through the truck's windows, we stand at our door and do nothing, else we will be next. Our hearts twist in shame.

For an hour, we sleep. I dream of you, my Grigori. We bathe in the River Tura by the low-hanging pines, a current pulling us toward Poland. Water spills over you as you emerge, your black hair clinging to the muscles in your neck. You move against the river’s force toward me, your arms open. Your skin glows like the day we first met at the Festival of the Virgin. If you were alive, I would ask, “Do you remember that summer of 1892 before half of Russia fell in love with you and the other half despised you?”

The crack of a gun breaks the spell of my dream. Your eyes darken. You shake my shoulder. “Go quickly, liubymaya,” you say. “Hide there, in the wild blue rye by the river.”

When my eyes open, Uncle Romu is shaking me on my sawdust cot. Your brother’s long-lashed eyes, nearly as blue as yours, make me think, for a moment, you are here leaning over me. I blink away ready tears when I remember you are gone. But your words from the dream still echo in my ears: the wild blue rye by the river.

“It’s time,” Romu whispers. 

I smell his fear like vinegar.

Taking care not to step on a creaking board, I gather our belongings and fetch the gun I stole from a sleeping guard. Carefully, I lift it from under a stone in the kitchen floor and tuck it into my secret pocket. It hangs cold and heavy against my thigh.

Since the guards moved us three days ago, we have memorized all the loose boards on the floor. Tonight is our test. 

Tiptoeing, we carry blankets out to the wagon. Your brother stole Nina and Lev back from the red guards, but their hooves are punished by constant work. Romu lifts us one by one into the wagon like sacks of grain. Varvara, Dimitri, and I crouch low among the buckets filled with scavenged food and supplies for our journey.

“Goodbye, dear village,” I whisper as the horses startle under the gentle whip.

Silent as fawns in our shawls, we peer through the wagon slats at the houses of our village. Romu takes care to steer around branches that might crack, rocks that might tumble. He pulls hard on the reins, the bits stretching the horses’ lips into devilish grins. Not yet fully awake, these twice-stolen horses carry us away from the only home we have ever known. But where can we go? Everyone hates us now. The Whites because they think you had too much power over Nicholas. The Reds because they see you as part of the imperial system they hated. Why can’t they see we are just peasants striving for something better?

We drive until noon, the grayish, heat-blanched sky sagging above us. The range of St. Genevieve’s looms ahead as the churches and fields of buckwheat glitter behind us. Rounded foothills close in, taking on the dark, hulking shapes of their names —the Camel, the Bull, and the Bald Snake.

Mile after mile, we drive away from the men who bark Lenin’s orders. Who muddy our carpets, linger in our courtyards, and crush our ferns and flowers under their boots. Men who sleep under quilts sewn with our children’s old clothes, who haunt our root cellars, gorge on our cured meats, and steal the pickled beets we carefully saved for winter. 

The guards said I must clean the factory floors now. Who would imagine I once sat beside you at the fine tables of the Winter Palace and ate off gilded plates once used by Peter the Great?

An emaciated dead horse lies rotting along the road, blocking our passage. Before the Reds took our town, the Whites exchanged most of our healthy horses for their starving war-worn beasts. Most of them teetered into our barns and perished. The few surviving, we fed with spent hops and the wheat chaff dumped behind the mill. It takes all of us to pull the dead horse’s stinking bulk to the side of the road so the cartwheels can roll past. 

As we crest the Bull, the vanquished sun rolls down the sky like a severed head, coming to rest on the hip of St. Genevieve. Blood pours from her breasts like rivulets of mother’s milk into the sunset. We need her protection now. Pulling the cart behind a boulder, we decide to set up camp below St. Genevieve’s ribs. Frogs and insects begin to chant as our saint spreads her long legs across the mountain range above us, reaching down into the ravine where we will sleep in her palm.

We lift pots, oil, salt, and bread from the wagon, our hands still stinking of rotting horse. I help Varya lay the fur blankets over soft pine needles. In the dimming light, we bend over rocks and splash our faces in the stream. With a smile, I show her my shard of soap. The lye has hardened into a precious gem in my pocket. She holds it in her hands like a treasure and lathers, spreading the soft bubbles over her face and neck. I can feel the pistol hanging against my leg as I lean into the stream. 

Clean and hungry, we gather around a fire and quietly sing old Siberian folk songs. Romu passes me a clay jug of vodka. We do not talk but look deeply into the flames and drink. Our eyelids grow heavy as a squirrel sizzles on a spit. We chew crusts of rye bread without butter. The guards took the last of the butter.

“Mama,” Dimitri says, his eyes gleaming like stolen rings, “are we homeless?” My only son, grown now and with a man’s body, has the mind of a young child.

I put my hands on his broad, simple face and look into his eyes. “Don’t you know, my dorogoy?” I say. “All this happened because the evil man killed your father.”

He is too exhausted from the journey to feel the sting of my words. “You mean Prince Yusopov,” he says with resignation, rubbing his foot. 

“Yes,” I say, my hands pressing against his high cheekbones. “I swear, my boy, I will find the Judas who killed him and use Russia’s fury in vengeance.”

Chapter 1- The Brown-Headed Cowbird

“The brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) is a brood parasite that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests as a survival strategy. The host birds, or "foster parents," raise cowbird young at the expense of their own, often leading to the death of the host’s offspring.” -Dr. Harriet Thorne, Summer 2014 issue of Berkeley Natural Science Compendium

1980- Polperro, Cornwall

In the hushed cacophony of the manor, death’s uninvited musicians had already begun to tune their warning song in the throat of the colonel. But Rupert wasn’t prepared to hear the swan’s song.

            As he entered the sun-brindled room from the hall, he closed the heavy doors on the conclave of relatives who whispered furtively, waiting their turn. A stench of tuberose and antiseptic engulfed him as he moved toward the four-poster bed.

“Is it you?” croaked the colonel from behind the velvet drapes. “There’s something I must tell you. Though, you’ll think I’ve gone mad.”  

“I'm here, father,” Rupert said, taking stock of the room. Hazy of protocol in such circumstances, he grabbed an upholstered spoonback and dragged it close. Here, he could better appraise the patriarch and make calculated decisions if necessary. But the sight of the withered man peering up from a stork’s nest of quilts dampened all the fortitude he had prevailed upon to appear. 

The colonel lay pale and spent against a headboard painted with ferns. Moss appeared to have spread from the wood to the patient’s cheeks, bringing to mind a creature just surfacing from a lagoon. As servants bustled on other floors, slamming doors and cantering down stairwells, the bedroom walls trembled in their ancient wallpaper casings, the gilded borders trying their best to reclaim a bygone era. 

Rupert couldn’t bear the sound of his father’s once-booming voice, now just the whine of a Swainson’s thrush. And the sight of him. He appeared so undignified in his stained nightshirt that Rupert turned his gaze to the muralled ceiling. Warriors in chainmail galloped around the chandelier, rescuing damsels with long auburn hair, gloating in kitschy scenes of Victorian morality. Had his father lived by the virtues whose pictorial messengers greeted him at dawn and again before snuffing the candle? Rupert thought not. Honor and truth, his father always seemed to imply, were overrated in these modern times where you had to grab what you could and toss a shilling behind your shoulder for the unlucky.

            Reluctantly, Rupert surrendered his attention to the sickbed. How could this be the man who commanded battalions at Flanders and stood before theaters of reverent ornithologists? An emotion he did not fully recognize welled in his throat as he fumbled for his father’s hand below the bedsheet. 

            “I came as quickly as I could,” he said, a tight, unexpected misery under his temples. His eyes swelled in a simulation of concern as he tried to quiet the real grief gathering inside him.

            “My son —” the old man sputtered. “I’ve held this secret for so long. I’m sorry I kept it from you, but I feared there were spies.” 

            Rupert leaned in, puzzled. What was the old bloke on about? His father’s milky-blue eyes rolled in their sockets as if even the muscles that normally held them in place were exhausted. The gold-flecked irises reminded Rupert of the sea glass he used to collect as a boy beyond the Gribben Hill, the polished shards loosening from their clutches of sand, washing up in waves on the shingle.                      

The dying man opened his parched lips, reaching for a thought as the grandfather clock ticked its pitiless staccato. “Come closer,” he said. “There’s little time.”

            Rupert could imagine quite a few possible misdeeds haunting his father. He already knew about the stolen bird specimens from Lord Rothschild’s archive and several marital infidelities. But what secret would he reveal on his deathbed? He couldn’t help wondering if it had to do with Imogen’s death in the 20s. Though his father’s first wife died before he was born, he’d tried to put the pieces together for a while. According to public records, Imogen’s alleged lover, the son of a Polperro smuggler, had been convicted and hanged for her murder. But there were rumors amongst the townsfolk about the colonel’s jealousy. And worse. 

Please don’t confess this, Rupert thought. The family name would never recover if it got out.

“It’s about your sister,” said his father. “And a very special bird. Promise me, give her a letter. It will explain everything. She is not who you think.” 

            That morning, Rupert had been forced to abandon the much-anticipated horse race at Kempton Park. As jockeys stretched their legs and drank tall glasses of lemonade in the sun, a courier handed him a message on the bleachers. His father only had hours to live. The news did not sink in at first. So, with a huff and a gulp of claret, he gathered his binoculars and fedora, abandoning the giddy excitement of the park before the race began. Sunburnt and agitated, he boarded the train to Saint Austell, pondering his inheritance prospects as fields of sheep and hedgerows whirred past. 

            Now, in the dappled light from the bay sash windows, he bent over the ghostly face, questions mounting inside him. Still wearing the tailored linen suit, smart wingtips dusty from the racetracks, and fine yellow socks, he felt he belonged in the Georgian family home. It should go to him, not his sister. He was sure of it. Violet had become far too American and unrefined to be a worthy heir of Landividy. But would his father’s secret help his chances of getting it, or just the opposite?

“I would have told you before,” his father continued after a spell, “but the Romanovs have many enemies.”

Chapter 2 -The Magpie

“The magpie (genus: Pica) is one of the few nonmammalian species able to recognize itself in a mirror test.” Harriet Thorne- Fall issue of 2014 issue of Berkeley Natural Science Compendium

2010 Washington DC

  Harriet pulled two gowns from the hotel closet, both whispering in dry-cleaning sleeves. As she appraised them, they glimmered in the light like newly caught fish on their hooks. 

Not wasting a moment, she wriggled into the long emerald one, but it was clear she needed a strapless bra, which, of course, she forgot to pack. The low cut and gathers over her boyish figure made her look like a schoolgirl playing dress-up. 

Back at her Berkeley apartment, she had imagined all the time she’d have before the gala, shopping for lingerie at Macy’s or Coup De Foundre, spraying sample perfumes on her wrist, and taking in the historic allure of the DC. But damn it, she’d napped and overslept. And, if she didn’t hurry, she’d be late for the most important presentation of her life. 

Cursing, she flung the dress onto the minibar, snatching the navy sleeveless borrowed from Millie. Zippering herself in, she turned before the mirror, snug and elegant as a butterfly about to emerge from its chrysalis. Much better. She wanted to impress but didn’t want to appear ostentatious or gouache. That tedious old class insecurity reared its head as she contemplated her image, the deprecating voice of her half-sister Alice flinging insults at her from the past. Who did she think she was presenting to these well-heeled science patrons when she was so ugly and stupid? Enough already. She pushed the voice away.

But she was Colonel John Willoughby’s great-granddaughter, and the donors would likely associate her with old money. Having grown up in the Bracken Hollow commune, she felt like an imposter in these erudite circles. So, practicing her confident, uptown face before the mirror, she fastened her grandmother’s magpie brooch onto the lapel of her silk jacket. The bird’s diamond eyes stared back at her with skeptical curiosity. 

A lock of her chestnut bob had gone rogue while she slept. “Great,” she growled, cupping her hands under the polished chrome faucet and batting down the wayward lock with water. With each failed attempt to tame it, her panic mounted.

  “Come on.” She clenched her teeth, glancing at the time on the microwave, a swelling sense of doom within her. “I’m supposed to talk about birds, not look like one,” she said aloud to her image with a faint smile, imagining Bruno’s warm laugh in response.

        Just as she decided— the hell with it, it’s not a beauty contest, her phone vibrated. It must be Bruno wondering where the hell she was. But she saw with surprise it was Grandma Violet calling from across the Atlantic. With helpless surrender, she knew she must answer, even if it made her late. The Cornish 92-year-old had recently suffered a stroke and counted on Harriet more than ever.

        “Vi,” Harriet chirped with forced enthusiasm. Setting the phone to speaker, she propped it up against the faux marble Kleenex box, opened the mascara, and carefully brushed the black ink onto her lashes. “I’d love to talk, but I’m running late for the Smithsonian. It must be the middle of the night in England! Is everything okay?”

        “No, Pet,” her grandma said in a thin, defeated voice. “I can’t sleep. Haven’t been able to for ages because, well, because—”

        Harriet leaned in closer to the mirror and carefully wiped off a tail of ink from the corner of her eye, resuming the battle with her hair. Vi’s troubled moan indicated this conversation might be tricky to cut short.

         “Why can’t you sleep? Has your blood pressure been high? Have you been taking your pills?”

        “It’s not that, Petal. It’s because I can’t stop thinking about what the detective said.”

        “The detective?” This was more than Harriet had bargained for.

        “They’re reviewing Mummy’s murder case,” her grandmother said as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

         Harriet jerked upright in genuine shock.“What? Why on earth would they do that?” 

        “We’ve had construction workers at Landividy to restore the stonework in the old servant’s cottages. One of them found a revolver hidden in a grate near the cliffs where Mummy died.”

        Harriet's jaw tightened as she rummaged in her dopp kit for a pair of pearl studs. “That was, what, 80 years ago? Sounds like they’re making too much of it. We come from a long line of hunters, you know.”

        “I don’t think it's just the gun that worries them,” Vi said. “They’ve found a locket tangled around the saddle ring, and they've tested the hair in it.”

        “Okay,” Harriet said slowly, trying to follow the narrative as she slapped more water onto her head. “Tested the locket?”

         “The hair, of course, on the saddle ring! And then, DS Wilford, who called me from London, said they’ll need to search Daddy’s old bird specimens for something he might have stolen.”

        Harriet’s hand froze. A drop of water rolled down her cheek, leaving a stripe of lighter skin. “Why on earth?” A nagging memory of an article she’d read coaxed her attention, but she tried to ignore it.

        “I think the hanged man’s family wants to find new evidence to exonerate their relative posthumously.” Violet’s voice sounded lost. “ And, I have a strange feeling there’s something they aren’t telling me about Daddy’s bird collection.”

        Harriet took a deep breath and tried to think as an ambulance wailed below Penn Quarter. “So, they’ve found a gun," she said, affecting a sense of calm authority for Vi's sake. "Great-grandpa was a huge hunter, right? As were so many of those old aristocrats who lived there. So why re-open the case because of a gun? Sounds like some detectives in London are getting bored and need a fox to chase.”

            “Maybe at first, but you know how Cornish people are. Always poking their noses into other people’s business. I think one of the workmen told Pip about the gun, and he’s seizing on it.”

  Harriet did not want to have this conversation, especially since her great-grandfather Willoughby was the focus of tonight's appeal to the donors. “Vi, I’m sure it will all get sorted out,” she said, unconvinced by her own words. She stood frozen before the mirror as a quiet dread spread through her body. Forcing herself to move, she abandoned the hair campaign and quickly applied a neutral, plum-colored lipstick.