Peter gave her a strange look she could not decipher and seemed about to say something, then stopped. “All right.” He nodded. “We will go to Perm. But we will have to disguise ourselves, and we will need new clothes.”

“I have the jewels that were hidden in my garments. We could sell those.” She had removed them and now kept them in a cloth bag fashioned from one of her bandages.

He shook his head. “Any buyer will ask where they came from. Let’s bring them with us but keep them hidden, my love. In civil wars, the safest rule is to trust no one.”

They set off one sunny morning and headed toward a mountain pass Peter knew, which cut through the peaks without forcing them to climb too high. Maria felt anxious about leaving their sanctuary, worried about what lay ahead, but comforted herself that all would be well while she had Peter by her side.

Before long her wounded leg ached, and by the end of the first day her feet were covered in painful blisters because her buckled leather shoes were not designed for a mountain trek. Peter found a weed he called plantain and squeezed the sticky juice from its leaves directly onto her poor feet.

“It will soothe and heal the blisters,” he said, and she could feel the sting ease straightaway.

Next morning he presented her with some new shoes he had made during the night from birch bark. “They’re called lapti,” he told her. “This is what peasants wear. I’ve put some plantain leaves inside to protect your feet as you walk.”

The lapti were comfortable; they gripped the earth firmly yet did not chafe. Was there anything this man couldn’t do?

Her grief seemed stronger now they were on the move, but at the same time she pictured her joy if they found Tatiana at her aunt Ella’s house. They could all three comfort each other. What would they make of Peter? She remembered Tatiana chastising her for consorting with the guards, but she must change her mind in the face of this courageous man who had carried her on his back for three days. He would be Tatiana’s brother-in-law once they wed, and she thought he had many qualities in common with her sister’s sweetheart Dmitri Malama, who had been decorated in the war. They might have been born into different classes, but like Malama, Peter was a man of great courage.

The rain grew more persistent as they reached the western side of the mountain range, and Peter explained that moisture was drawn in the atmosphere all the way from the Atlantic Ocean then trapped by these rocky peaks. “That’s why it rains more in Perm than in Ekaterinburg,” he said. Maria hadn’t known that before.