Read Online The Lost Crown by Sarah Miller - Free Book Online Page B

admit after a moment. “A jealous little beast.”
    “She is worried too, Mashka.”
    “Are you?” I ask quietly, tracing the embroidered edging of the red cross on her uniform. This close, I can smell her jasmine perfume over the iodine and alcohol from the lazaret.
    “No. Not for Aleksei. He has Dr. Derevenko, and Papa, Nagorny, and Monsieur Gilliard to look after him.” She pauses. “I do worry about Olga, though. She still seems so fragile.”
    We should have worried about Aleksei. Otets Grigori told Mama everything would pass, but the next day we have three more telegrams from Papa, each more frightening than the last. Aleksei had gotten worse, so bad that Dr. Derevenko insisted they should bring him home. It sounds as bad as Spala, when a bruised groin nearly killed him. That time there hadn’t been a drop of blood. It all welled up under his tender skin until he couldn’t even straighten his leg.
    Just like when Anya was hurt, we race to the train station. This time it’s so quiet. The station has been emptied so no one can find out that the heir to the throne is ill again. When our own imperial train pulls into the station and the brakes hiss like one giant sigh, I realize I’ve been holding my breath. Papa steps out, and right then I want to run to him. But he goes straight to Mama’s side and hooks his arm around her waist. Tatiana steps back to join my sisters as he speaks softly in Mama’s ear.
    “Where’s Aleksei?” Anastasia whispers. My eyes dart back and forth across the train’s windows. All of us huddle closer. Tatiana begins to murmur a prayer. Olga joins her. Finally Papa turns to the train and nods.
    Inside, something moves. A stretcher, carried by four big sailors moving slowly as a cloud passing across the sun. Only Aleksei’s mouth and sweet blue eyes peep out from the bandages wound around his pale little face, but two scarlet lines mark the place where his nose still bleeds beneath the wrappings. Like part of the stretcher himself, Nagorny braces Aleksei’s head and shoulders as the men lower our brother from the train.
    “He can’t lie down,” Papa tells Mama. “We had to stop the train several times during the night to change the plugs in his nostrils. He fainted twice.”
    Mama moans into Papa’s khaki shirt, and I know we’re all thinking the same thing: Spala. After days in bed, Mama and Anya took Aleksei for a carriage ride in the fresh air. But the bumpy ride only started the bleeding inside him all over again. The poor darling had nearly passed out from the pain by the time they returned to the hunting lodge. And now we have to get Aleksei from the train station all the way home, in a motorcar.
    My sisters and I watch as Aleksei is loaded into one car, then we pile into another with Nagorny and Joy. I’ve always thought Dr. Derevenko’s kind eyes and sable beard are soothing as a teddy bear, but the look on his face as he climbs in behind Papa and Mama makes me want to whimper like Joy. All the way back to the palace we crane our necks around the driver to see the car ahead of us. Even motoring scarcely faster than a walk, the slightest rattle makes every one of us flinch.
    Thank heaven for Mama’s private lift. Once we get him home, Aleksei glides to the children’s floor before we can clatter up the marble steps. Upstairs everyone swarms around Aleksei’s narrow army cot while his dyadka holds Joy back. My sisters and I kneel before the iconostasis, begging God for mercy.
    I’ve never been this close to my brother in the middle of one of his attacks. In Spala, I heard his screams fade into wails and groans from down the hall, but here, everything is so awfully quiet, like the train station. The doctor hardly speaks louder than our prayers.
    A cough from Aleksei makes us all jump, and Dr. Derevenko swears. Beside me, Olga begins to sway. I peek over my shoulder at the crowd around Aleksei’s cot. A pile of bright bloody rags is heaped on the floor near the head