There was a table leg from Raisa’s apartment in the woodpile. Maria asked Yelena to bring it to her along with some clean rags, then she peeled back her coat and lifted her skirt to look at her thigh. It was hideously swollen, like an elephant’s leg, marked with red and purple blotches, but at least the bone had not penetrated the skin.

“Take my boots off, then leave me alone,” she ordered. “I need to be on my own.”

Once they left the room, she gripped a pillow between her teeth and felt along her thigh with her fingers, poking through the swelling to see where the bone was cracked and how it should lie. Biting down hard, she pushed it into place, almost passing out with the pain. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she tied the chair leg to her thigh as a splint, pulling hard to tighten the knots. When it was done, she dragged the bedcover over herself, laid her head on the pillow, and lost consciousness.

Chapter 45

Leningrad, November 1942

WHEN STEPAN RETURNED, HE WAS SHOCKED BY HIS MOTHER’S condition. She was shivering with fever and delirious with pain. He piled on extra blankets and stoked a fire in her bedroom. Doctors didn’t make house calls anymore, and he had no way of getting her to the hospital. They did not have so much as an aspirin powder in the house, but he remembered his father’s teaching and made a poultice of comfrey root from a plant in the courtyard, then wrapped it around her thigh.

Over the next week, Maria drifted in and out of consciousness. She had complicated dreams in which she was running in the grounds of the Alexander Palace with her brother and sisters, looking for someone who was missing. She moaned and murmured, “Tatiana.”

“Who is Tatiana?” a voice asked, and she opened her eyes to see Stepan. Why did he not know?

“Your aunt, of course,” she said, gritting her teeth against a wave of pain before drifting off again.

One night she woke in pitch dark and wondered if she had already died. She could hear voices in her head. “Let go, Maria. Come to us. It’s your time.” It felt as if they were trying to drag her down a long tunnel. She could sense her family was there, but not Peter. Why did he not come for her? Maybe that meant they were wrong and it wasn’t her time . . . But it must be close. She was too ill. She would not survive this.

Stepan appeared at her bedside with a flickering kerosene lamp. “You were moaning, Mama. Can I get you something?”