8

Katyusha's hand shook even harder, and her eyes hesitated in turning towards Padre Ansaldi, whose shocked face could be easily imagined.

"Reincarnation...?" he repeated.

"Yes... do you... believe in it?"

The priest then took off his glasses, wiping them as usual with a piece of his frock.

"Technically, this is difficult for me. It would be against more than one dogma of my religion. And, if I'm not very much mistaken, of yours as well."

"That is why I had asked you to answer me as a man, not as a priest."

"I know. And I had told you that at times it is difficult for me to separate the two things. I am afraid that this matter is among those issues."

The Grand Duchess took a deep breath, lowering her gaze even further.

"Then... you don't believe in it, do you?"

Almost sensing how that answer had added to the negative thoughts cluttering his pupil's mind, Padre Ansaldi thought that it was best to moderate things a bit.

"Of course, as I love to say, I am not the kind of priest that deals in absolutes. The rational thought is one of the greatest conquest of mankind."

"But shouldn't the rational thought exclude God's existence, at least as much as should with reincarnation?"

"Only for knuckleheads. Because if we can rationally deduce that there is no proof of the existence of a higher being, just as rationally we have to recognize that there are innumerable things within creation that Man has not been able to conceive yet."

"Is this your own theory?"

"Not just mine. I have been in an epistolary relationship with an English scientist for quite some time. Mr. Charles Darwin. He has put forward a rather unusual theory on the role of Man on this Earth and his way of approaching creation, and I must admit it is quite fascinating for me."

"Rationalism." said the little girl with a sarcastic smile. "The death of ecclesiastical thought."

"Or its elevation to a higher level." replied Ansaldi in the same tone. "Anyway, if I may, why this odd question? Is there something that perturbs you, perhaps?"

Once more, the Grand Duches hesitated, almost afraid to be called mad for what she was about to say.

"The thing is... lately I do not know anymore who I am."

"What?!"

"Do you remember when I shared with you those weird dreams that I have from time to time?"

"Those in which you imagine to be the commander of a small army?"

"They've happened more often as of late. Sometimes, like earlier, I just need to close my eyes for a few seconds to see again those scenes. And each time, they become more lifelike and less unfocused. I am beginning to wonder if they are just dreams after all."

Padre Ansaldi's hand disappeared inside his frock, extracting from it his beloved darkwood pipe and putting the mouthpiece between his lips after lighting it.

"Basically, you believe you are seeing images of a prior life, don't you?"

"I couldn't say. Everything I see is so weird, so difficult to grasp. At times it doesn't seem like I'm looking at my world, it's that much different."

"Thinking to have lived a prior life is hard to conceive already." the priest laughed. "But another world, even!"

"If I had known that you would have laughed at me I would have not spoken of this with you." said Katyusha, puffing her cheeks.

The holy man returned serious, tasting a generous puff of Tuscan tobacco and leaving in the air a small cloud of smoke.

"I happened to hear similar tales in the past. Tales of people that for some reason had memories that did not belong to them, as if they were memories of somebody else. For the most part, it's the ramblings of some madman, but I myself have to admit that some of these tales are so detailed that it's hard to dismiss them as mere fantasies."

"There is one thing, however, that I have begun to ask myself as of late."

"And what could it be?"

"What if..." the small girl stuttered, her voice breaking. "This.. were... the dream?"

This time, even Ansaldi was left speechless, standing there with his mouth hanging half-open and the pipe on the point of slipping out of his hand.

"Both worlds seem so real. So much that at times, like before, when I wake up it's difficult to understand the situation. The more time passes, more that life, the life of a commander surrounded by its soldiers, seems real, even more real than this one."

Katyusha then turned towards his tutor, with the lost and confused gaze of someone hoping to get an answer, any answer.

"Who am I? Am I a princess that has dreamed to be a soldier, or am I a soldier that is dreaming that she is a princess?"

At that, Padre Ansaldi lowered his head, put out his pipe and said nothing.

"I think that's enough for today."

Recently, misfortune seemed to have struck Mr. Parson and the lucrative commerce that he had sponsored, between the United States and the Russian Empire.

After months spent trying to curry favour with the Tsar, his weapons firm had finally managed to get the contract to supply the Empire with newly designed weapons.

But with that, the problems had just started piling up.

First, the troubles to contact Washington to get the green light for the acquisition, with the mail and the orders that kept being lost in the infinite Russian plains or at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and then the orders that, for some reason, most of the time arrived misplaced, or mismatched with what had been requested.

As any good businessman, Parson had tried to sidestep the problem by placing smaller, more easily traceable orders, but when this measure had proved useless as well, the very displeasing thought of some saboteur had begun to slither its way into his mind.

At first his suspicions had focused on his three bodyguards that his firm had forced upon him, men with a less than immaculate past and perhaps willing to be bought by some rival firm, enticed by the Imperial gold. Because of that he had ordered to some street urchins he had befriended to follow them around, but after a week of stalking none of the three had behaved suspiciously, and that had led Parson to discard them from his suspects' list.

So, he had begun to investigate inside the entourage of the Tsar and his family, moreso because of what had happened at Peterhof a few weeks' earlier.

According to his personal opinion, that he had very carefully not shared with anyone, it was far from unlikely that whoever had orchestrated the attempted kidnapping of the Grand Duchess Ekaterina would try and sink the potential collaboration between the Imperial family and the United States Government, indirectly involved in the matter.

This, however, shed an even more sinister light on the situation. Indeed, nobody on the face of the Earth should have known of the aforementioned collaboration; Mr. Parson's very identity had been carefully kept dark, for fear of one of the Great Powers involved possibly misunderstanding a mere business relationship as some sort of non-existing American support towards Russia in the ongoing conflict.

For those reasons, Parson had convinced himself that whoever was trying to get in his way surely had to be close to both him and the Tsar, close enough to have had the way to connect all the dots.

With an excuse he had thus managed to gather information on dignitaries, advisors, military personnel and even members of the staff, and, having brought everything in his private residence in Moscow, he had begun shifting through a huge mound of paperwork.

Locked up in his room, he kept working without a pause deep into the night, and the picture that, paper after paper, began to form had something terrifying about it.

It was no matter for three or four people; there were at least twelve names in that list that had probably been working since time immemorial against the Tsar and his family, to the point of trying to sabotage the acquisition of armaments, spelling thus the more than likely defeat of the Empire.

Probably the majority of them had no idea of the plan they were a part of; perhaps they were all men that thought only about the easy money to get, and any patriotism or national pride be damned.

Save for one person; someone that at first looked above any suspicion, but that for a reason that even Parson could not fathom was at the helm of that whole conspiracy, or at the very least had a critically important role in it.

"I cannot believe this..." he stuttered, his hands shaking. "I refuse to believe you're such a traitor. Not you."

The proofs that he had weren't that many, but it was enough to alert the Tsar and to spur him into taking all the appropriate measures.

He was about to call a servant and order him to ready the coach as soon as possible to run to the Kremlin, when a series of noises coming from the floor below derailed his thoughts.

At first he thought that his escort had gone for another round with some vodka, but after a few seconds the businessman heard a great deal of steps that quickly went up the stairs.

Parson had just enough time to grab the revolver from the drawer and place it on the table, before right after the door was slammed open, and five soldiers broke into the room.

"What does this mean?"

"Mr. Parson." said the Sergeant in command. "You stand accused of having conspired with the enemies of the Empire."

"Absurd! I have no idea what you are talking about."

"You have deliberately sold defective weapons to our army. This proves that you are conspiring with the foreign powers. Come with us. You'll have the chance to explain yourself later on."

The Sergeant was playing good cop, but the bloodstains on his and his men's uniform told otherwise.

"How much did that rat pay you?"

Lightning quick, he grabbed the revolver, managing to kill one of the soldiers and wounding two more, but at that point the remaining ones jumped against him all together, finishing him with the bayonets.