Read Online Red Stefan by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online

aware that the air is vibrating with the clamour of unheard bells. She was disturbed without knowing why. But it had been a relief to speak—the greatest relief that she had known for more than a year. The burden of her secret knowledge had been lifted. Stephen could carry it now.

CHAPTER VII
    The snow did not come. A bitter wind blew, and the sky was heavy and dull.
    Elizabeth’s strength came back to her. She was astonished at the number of hours she could sleep. She went out next morning into the yard which lay behind the house. There was a rough barn with a diminished store of fodder for the one cow, which was the last pride of Akulina’s heart. Once she had had three; now it was as much as they could do to keep even one alive through the winter. She grumbled on about the old times and the new without waiting for any reply. She did not trouble herself to be at all discreet. If she couldn’t say what she liked at her time of life and in her own backyard, things had come to a pretty pass. Indeed that was just what they had come to. What was the use of sweating and straining to grow crops for Them to take away and hand over to townsfolk who had never done an honest day’s work on the land in their lives? “And if you hide a bit of corn to keep you alive through the winter they go on as if you’d done murder.” As if it wasn’t hard enough to get a living anyway, with neither of them as young as they were and Katinka so far away that she might just as well be dead. “Those who have ten children can have them all under one roof, but when you’ve only got one she’s bound to go as far away as she can.” She and Yuri had had other children, but they had lost them all, and now, when she could have done very well with a good strong girl about the house, Stefan must needs go and bring home a useless dreep of a creature with about as much colour and strength as a tallow dip which has been left out in the August sun.
    Elizabeth endeavoured to placate her.
    â€œI’m getting stronger.”
    â€œWith those hands? What work have they ever done, I should like to know!”
    â€œI can sew,” said Elizabeth.
    â€œAnd embroider?”
    â€œOh yes.”
    â€œAnd what’s the good of that, now there’s no cloth to be had? Even if one had money to buy, the government shop is only open one day in the month—and the good-for-nothing rubbish they sell!” She made a gesture of contempt. “We used to weave our own cloth, but They won’t have it. Fine new times—that’s what I say! You’ve no clothes but what you stand up in, I suppose?”
    Elizabeth shook her head.
    â€œWhen I married,” said Akulina with pride, “I’d a Sunday dress as well as a working one, and I had two embroidered handkerchiefs. I have them still. In those days stuff was made to last, not to fall to pieces when it had been worn three times.”
    While she grumbled, Elizabeth was thinking. Her bad Russian would be less noticeable in a village where a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian would probably be quite usual. She must say as little as possible of course. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to go out much.
    She found next day that she would have to make a public appearance. There was to be a special broadcast at the Soviet House, when a speech by Voroshiloff would be received. To stay away would be to expose oneself to a charge of being lacking in Revolutionary ardour. Red Stefan’s wife must be above suspicion in that respect. She could at any rate hope to be lost in a crowd, since the whole village would be there.
    They walked up the road to the pink-washed building which Elizabeth had seen standing out amongst the village houses on the day of their arrival. It contained a fair-sized hall furnished with benches. At the far end was a platform upon which there were a couple of chairs, a table, and a wireless installation. From the wall a picture of