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Feodor shouted: "This is what you did to Ivan!"
Fitz reached for his revolver.
Feodor raised his rifle above his head. For a frozen moment the long Mosin-Nagant hovered in the air like an executioner's axe. Then he brought the rifle down, with a powerful blow, and hit the top of Andrei's head. There was a sickening crack, and Andrei fell.
Valeriya screamed.
Fitz, standing in the doorway with the door half-closed, thumbed off the lock on the left side of his revolver's barrel and aimed at Feodor; but the peasants crowded around his target. They began to kick and beat Andrei, who lay on the floor unconscious. Valeriya tried to get to him to help him, but she could not push through the crowd.
A peasant with a scythe struck at the portrait of Bea's stern grandfather, slashing the canvas. One of the men fired a shotgun at the chandelier, which smashed into tinkling fragments. A set of drapes suddenly blazed up: someone must have put a torch to them.
Fitz had been on the battlefield and had learned that gallantry had to be tempered with cool calculation. He knew that on his own he could not save Andrei from the mob. But he might be able to rescue Valeriya.
He pocketed the gun.
He stepped into the hall. All attention was on the supine prince. Valeriya stood at the edge of the throng, beating ineffectually on the shoulders of the peasants in front of her. Fitz grabbed her by the waist, lifted her, and carried her away, stepping back into the drawing room. His bad leg hurt like fire under the burden, but he gritted his teeth.
"Let me go!" she screamed. "I must help Andrei!"
"We can't help Andrei!" Fitz said. He shifted his grip and slung his sister-in-law over his shoulder, easing the pressure on his leg. As he did so a bullet passed close enough for him to feel its wind. He glanced back and saw a grinning soldier in uniform aiming a pistol.
He heard a second shot, and sensed an impact. He thought for a moment that he had been hit, but there was no pain, and he dashed for the communicating door that led to the dining room.
He heard the soldier shout: "She's getting away!"
Fitz burst through the door as another bullet hit the woodwork. Ordinary soldiers were not trained with pistols and sometimes did not realize how much less accurate they were than rifles. Moving at a limping run, he went past the table elaborately laid with silver and crystal ready for four wealthy aristocrats to have dinner. Behind him he heard several pursuers. At the far end of the room a door led to the kitchen area. He passed into a narrow corridor and from there to the kitchen. A cook and several kitchen maids had stopped work and were standing around looking terrified.
Fitz's pursuers were too close behind him. As soon as they got a clear shot he would be killed. He had to do something to slow them down.
He set Valeriya on her feet. She swayed, and he saw blood on her dress. She had been hit by a bullet, but she was alive and conscious. He sat her in a chair, then turned to the corridor. The grinning soldier was running toward him, firing wildly, followed by several more in single file in the narrow space. Behind them, in the dining room and drawing room, Fitz saw flames.
He drew his Webley. It was a double-action gun so it did not need to be cocked. Shifting all his weight to his good leg, he aimed carefully at the belly of the soldier running at him. He squeezed the trigger, the gun banged, and the man fell on the stone floor in front of him. In the kitchen, Fitz heard women screaming in terror.
Fitz immediately fired again at the next man, who also went down. He fired a third time at a third man, with the same result. The fourth man ducked back into the dining room.
Fitz slammed the kitchen door. The pursuers would now hesitate, wondering how they could check whether he was lying in wait for them, and that might just give him the time he needed.
He picked up Valeriya, who seemed to be losing consciousness. He had never been in the kitchens of this house, but he moved toward the back. Another corridor took him past storerooms and laundries. At last he opened a door that led to the outside.
Stepping out, panting, his bad leg hurting like the very devil, he saw the carriage waiting, with Jenkins in the driver's seat and Bea inside with Nina, who was sobbing uncontrollably. A frightened-looking stable boy was holding the horses.
He manhandled the unconscious Valeriya into the carriage, climbed in after her, and shouted at Jenkins: "Go! Go!"
Jenkins whipped the horses, the stable boy leaped out of the way, and the carriage moved off.
Fitz said to Bea: "Are you all right?"
"No, but I'm alive and unhurt. You. . . ?"
"No damage. But I fear for your brother's life. " In reality he was quite sure Andrei was dead by now, but he did not want to say that to her.
Bea looked at the princess. "What happened?"
"She must have been hit by a bullet. " Fitz looked more closely. Valeriya's face was white and still. "Oh, dear God," he said.
"She's dead, isn't she?" Bea said.
"You must be brave. "
