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Chapter 1
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Kaunas County border, Lithuania, 1863
There was no possibility of sleep.
When Russian bullets and canon were not assaulting them by day, mosquitoes and other flying, biting insects took their place at night. Tauras almost wished for the bullets. Almost. At least that would be a better reason for being awake at this ungodly hour, he thought, as he slapped again at a buzzing nuisance around his neck. They had passed a farm seven kilometers back, and Tauras wondered now, as he did then, why they couldn't just bed down in the barn for a night. There were only five of them, after all. Five. His squadron had been decimated at the end of May. The remaining members routed, managing to connect up with a few other scattered groups, engaging in sabotage and hit-and-run tactics around the city of Raseiniai, but for all their effort, their numbers continued to dwindle.
Eventually word got through that the uprising was over, the leadership having all but fallen apart as summer drew near. Tauras refused to believe it, as did the remaining members of his squadron. There had been talk of going to Kaunas, where a squad led by a priest was somehow holding out. But Arnas dismissed it all as rumor. He never held much esteem for the clergy — something he always made sure to impress upon the rest of the men whenever Tauras was in earshot. Arnas was a believer of the old gods and, despite the Catholic leanings of his compatriots, had established himself as their leader — at least until they managed to regroup with the rest of their scattered squad, Tauras quietly hoped.
A few days passed in quiet respite from any gunfire. The mosquitoes, however, were still unrelenting.
They crossed into Tauragė County, where Tauras' family estate stood. It had been nearly three years since he was last home. Before his parents sent him away to the seminary in Varniai. It was an odd feeling, to be so near home, yet no one — not his parents nor younger brother or sister — even knew it. Tauras did not mention this, of course. It was bad enough Arnas found out he had been in the seminary. Tauras could only imagine the insults he would have to endure if any of the men knew he was a Russian-sympathizing aristocrat's son, too.
The men came upon a tree-covered mound — an ancient fortification from the days when the land had been besieged by foreign knights zealously bent on converting the pagan population. Arnas placed a palm reverently on the mound a few moments. Then he scrambled to the top.
"What do you see?" one of the men whispered hoarsely from below.
Arnas slid back down to them. "Four Russian soldiers. I think they're headed to Tauragė. Most likely a resupply run."
"What's the plan?" another man — Mykolas — asked.
Arnas gave them a grave look. "They're too close for us to encircle without drawing attention. All right. The top of the mound has enough trees for cover. We climb up there, wait for them to pass our position, then ambush."
The men nodded and began taking position to climb the mound. Tauras slung his rifle around his shoulder, about to ascend, when Arnas leaned in and said: "Don't ruin this, priest."
Tauras' jaw clenched. "I am not a priest." His fingers dug into the loamy earth, pulling himself up and away from Arnas' sneering face.
At the top of the mound, Tauras crouched, slowly moving himself forward, mindful of every step. The tree cover began to thin, giving way to nothing but grass and saplings as the mound sloped down to join an open field. It was through this field the Russian soldiers traversed — two of them driving a wagon, the other two on horseback behind it. Arnas signaled to take out the two on horseback first. As one, the men held their breath, waiting for the soldiers to pass. Then, they attacked.
Tauras flew down the mound, hardly aware of his feet touching the ground, certain he would trip. But there he was, at the bottom with the rest of his squad. The two soldiers on horseback startled and turned. One pulled the bridle too hard. He was closest to Tauras. The horse reared and the soldier fell. Arnas took out the other rider. The two soldiers in the wagon jumped down, running toward the fray. The crack of gunfire rang under the clear blue sky. The day was too beautiful for bloodshed, Tauras wildly thought. It almost seemed absurd. But then Mykolas fell, clutching his side. Arnas and two other men drew the fire from the wagon. Tauras covered Mykolas, rifle searching for a target. Meanwhile, the fallen horse rider scrambled up and grabbed the rifle from his saddle. He pointed it at Tauras, finger squeezing the trigger. Nothing happened. The soldier looked up, panicked. The hammer was stuck. Tauras shouldered his own weapon, but the man's cries of help from his comrades, the fear in his eyes, gave Tauras pause. He had never been this close before. In battle, he was the one in the back, laying down suppressing fire. He had never seen the faces of the men his rifle shot. Tauras froze.
"Shoot him!" Arnas cried a moment before a bullet tore through his neck. The rifle fell from his grip. He staggered back, hands futilely pawing at the hole in his throat. The other two squad members were dead at his feet. Mykolas had stopped moving moments ago.
Everything went quiet then, as if they were underwater. The shock on Arnas' face morphed into a plea. He fell on his knees in front of Tauras, one hand outstretched. There was a distant crack of a rifle and Arnas pitched forward. It seemed he took an age to fall.
The world rushed back in, fast and loud, and Tauras found himself alone in a field surrounded by Russian soldiers. The two by the wagon were now rushing to the aid of the one with the jammed rifle, who by now had tossed it aside and was reaching for his sidearm.
Tauras looked around at his fallen squadron. And did the only thing he could.
He ran.
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o
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Tilsit, East Prussia, 1869
Tauras awoke with a jerk, heart pounding in his throat. He had been having that dream again. Though, was it a dream if it really happened?
Tauras lay in bed a few moments more, too shaken to return to sleep. Predawn light was just beginning to show through the two dormer windows of his garret room. A sudden need for fresh air came upon him. Tauras rose, shuffling over to one of the windows as quietly as he could. The other occupant of the room, a boy of about fourteen, gave a snort and turned over in his sleep. Tauras unlatched the window. It swung in with the bite of crisp winter air. Tauras shut his eyes, breathing in deeply. His stomach felt hollow. Not the kind of hollowness accompanied by hunger, but another kind — one that radiated throughout his whole body.
His nerves would be the death of him.
The sleeping boy gave a shudder, muttering something incomprehensible in his sleep, pulling the worn quilt tighter around him. He was Tauras' apprentice — and ward, of sorts. The boy — Raivis — was an orphan. He showed up at Tauras' shop four years ago asking for a job. From the look of him, Tauras guessed he had been living on the streets for some months. When asked about his family, the boy went quiet for a time before finally saying: "Papa died on the boat." He eventually discovered the boy was Livonian. His father had been a merchant seaman who often made port in Königsberg. Raivis had been sailing with his father since he was six, after his mother passed. After the death of his father, Raivis missed the boat on its return to Riga. He had spent the remaining months wandering from town to town, avoiding those who would put him in an orphanage — or worse, a workhouse.
Tauras closed and latched the window. He silently dressed and went downstairs to gather water for the day.
Stifling a yawn, Tauras grabbed two buckets and made his way up to the pump in the middle of the high street. Though his house was on the riverfront, the pollution from the factories upstream had made the water undrinkable. Besides, it was January — the riverbank was a solid sheet of ice. He hoped the pump was not frozen too. He really should have had Raivis fetch water yesterday evening.
As the sun had not yet risen, the rest of the residents of Tilsit were still asleep. Tauras would not have to wait in line, at least. He started working the pump. The handle felt loose at first. Whatever water had been in the pipe yesterday had drained back down into the well, which meant it had not frozen. Good. His arms continued pumping, up and down, up and down. The handle became harder to maneuver, requiring more pressure, but years of pulling printing levers had left his muscles lean and strong. The water pushed its way up the pipe. Tauras readied the first bucket. It was soon full. A few more pumps and the second one was brimming with water as well.
Tauras hefted the now much heavier buckets back down to his house. Once inside, he filled a metal kettle with some of the water. He lit a fire in the kitchen's small stove, warming both the water and his cold fingers.
Tauras' house was a grey-stone tumbledown three-story squashed between half a dozen others all of similar mien along the banks of the Memel river. The house gave the impression it might have once been charming with its dormer windows set into the roof, but time and neglect had eventually taken their toll by the time Tauras came to own it. The ground floor was almost completely taken up by his print shop, with a small kitchen in the back. A sitting room with a fireplace and some threadbare furnishings occupied the second floor with another smaller room off the back — currently serving as a bedroom for his cousin, Eduard, when he was not traveling. The garret above this was Tauras' and Raivis' room.
The only noticeable difference between Tauras' house and the rest lining this block of the river was the sign above the door, though it too appeared hardly distinguishable from the rest of the drab coloring that marked this quarter of Tilsit. The sign read T. Laurinaitis — Printer in what had once been handsome gold lettering, now soot blackened from the factories further upriver. Tauras would say he did not mind the sign's dull color, would say that it gave his shop an established presence, making it seem older than its five years, which was why he never cleaned it. But the truth was he minded it very much.
When his sign first started to darken, he would dutifully climb up and clean it every week — only to see it covered anew the next day. The town boys found it a great sport, throwing fistfuls of river muck up at his clean sign and watching it splatter down on whoever was unfortunate enough to pass beneath it.
In the years following, Tauras resigned himself to the fact his small print shop would just have to have a dirty sign. The young vandals succeeded in their mission of defacing his sign and — either knowingly or unknowingly — of their parents' mission to drive business away from the latest Lithuanian to settle in their town. Most of the clients he received now were the same familiar faces — all Lithuanian, like him. A few East Prussians would stop in every now and then — when they wanted something done for cheap, Tauras thought bitterly. Though it wasn't as if his little shop was not busy, thanks in no small part to his cousin. It was just the kind of business Eduard brought was not always the paying kind — or the legal kind, for that matter.
The hiss of the kettle drew Tauras from his thoughts. He removed it from the fire and spooned some tea leaves into a cup, noting his tin was running low — he would need to buy some more soon. Tauras poured the water from the kettle and settled with his tea at the table. His hands were still cold from that morning's pump run. He wrapped them around his cup, bringing it up to inhale the steam. Already he was feeling better from the warmth.
Tauras finished his tea, swirling the final dregs around in his cup. The leaves clung to the sides, forming symbols, as he drained the last bit down. Tauras smiled to himself as he tilted his cup, examining the images. The practice was something Feliks had taught him when they were younger. Something the blonde boy said he'd learned from the Roma travelers when they camped on his family's land. One of the symbols looked like a compass, signifying travel for business. Then again, it could have been a cross in a circle. The circle boded well, but the cross made Tauras shudder. At best, it meant trouble — at worst, it meant death.
Tauras turned his cup, continuing his examination. There was a fish, meaning good news from another country. Tauras thought of his homeland and doubted he would hear any good news from there for quite some time. An hourglass, another dangerous portent. Lines, travel again. And finally, a tree — a symbol of prosperity and happiness. Tauras snorted. This certainly was a contradictory cup.
The appearance of a disheveled head of curly dark blonde hair pulled Tauras from his musings.
"What's so funny?" Raivis yawned, rubbing his eyes.
Tauras set the cup aside. "Nothing. Are you hungry?"
Raivis nodded and sat.
Tauras used some of the heated water and made them each a bowl of porridge.
"I'll go to the market this afternoon, if we aren't too busy," he said, catching the disappointed look on Raivis' face as he set the bowl in front of him.
The boy looked up, face blanching. "N-no! I mean, I'm sorry, Mr. Laurinaitis — this is...it's fine, really."
"It's all right. You don't have to apologize, Raivis. We've eaten nothing but porridge and fish for the past week. I'm not sure my tongue or stomach can take another day of it."
Raivis grinned sheepishly, tucking into his bowl. Tauras forced a smile in return. Things had been difficult that winter — even with his cousin's prospects. Many times, Eduard's patrons could not afford to pay them for their work, though it still cost Tauras in terms of material used. Paper and ink were not cheap. But he and Eduard refused to give it up. The cause was much too great. So, too, was the risk.
Tauras poured the rest of the hot water into his cup, re-steeping his contradictory tea leaves. Maybe I'll have better luck this time, he thought.
But the leaves remained just as cryptic.
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o
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Eduard blew in with a January gust early that afternoon, shaking the printed pages as they hung drying on their line inside the shop. A few loosened from their pins and fluttered to the floor. Tauras hurried to gather them. He set them on a table with a pointed glare, but his cousin's blue eyes were alight with a singular focus as he swung something off his arm and onto the table. Tauras barely managed to rescue the papers from being squished beneath a heavy wicker basket.
"Stop your work, cousin, and close the shop!" Eduard announced happily. "Lunch is on me today."
"What are you on about?" Tauras groused, setting the gathered papers on his desk — as far away from his cousin as he could manage.
Eduard gestured at the basket on the table. He lifted the lid. Inside were bundles of parsnips, heads of cabbage, eggs, pears, apples, bacon, and sausage. Tauras' mouth fell open at the sudden — and plentiful — sight of food.
"That's not all," Eduard grinned. He pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper. "Open it."
Tauras cut the twine binding it closed, careful not to tear the paper — he might have to use it later. Peeling back one corner of the parcel, Tauras gasped.
"Is this...?"
"Black bread." Eduard's grin now stretched from ear to ear.
Tauras lifted the rye loaf out of its wrappings and up to his nose, breathing in the scent. It was still warm. It had been months since they had last had bread this fresh. Months.
"But, Eduard, did you...?"
Before Tauras could finish his question, however, Raivis drifted over to see what all the commotion was about. His eyes widened hungrily the moment he saw the bread. He began reaching for it.
Raivis' appearance effected a change in Tauras. He snapped, taut as a line, stuffing the bread back in the basket and all but shooing the boy away.
"Don't you have work to do?"
"I finished it."
"Well, good. Then you can take Mr. Janavičius his order." Tauras gestured to a small wrapped bundle on his desk.
"But what about the food?"
"Lunch will be ready when you get back."
Raivis groaned, a sound soon followed by his stomach's own protestations, as he pulled on his coat and hat.
Eduard stuck his hand in the basket and pulled out a pear. He tossed it to Raivis with a wink. As soon as the boy left, Tauras turned the sign hanging on the door from open to closed. He picked up the basket and went back to the kitchen to begin preparing a stew. Eduard followed, sneaking another pear from the basket and settling himself at the table.
"You don't need to be so hard on him," he said.
"I don't know what you mean," Tauras replied, busy sorting and storing what Eduard had brought.
Eduard gestured with the half-eaten pear. "You didn't have to send him out."
Tauras looked up, eyes darkening. "Where did you get all this?"
Eduard's grin returned. He drew himself up proudly. "A new contact — "
"Exactly!" Tauras hissed. "And that's why I sent him off. The boy has a mouth, Ed — one he doesn't know how to control. All it takes is one slip-up. One word to the wrong person."
Eduard leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. "He knows what we print — he knows where I go — "
"Yes, and that is enough for him to know. Perhaps too much, even. But there's nothing to be done for it."
"What, are you saying you don't trust him? Hell, you practically raised him."
"No. It's his mouth I don't trust."
Tauras began chopping up some of the parsnips, then removed the casings from two of the sausages and crumbled them into a pan. Soon the smokey smell of frying meat filled the kitchen. Into a boiling pot went the parsnips.
"So this new contact," Tauras began.
Eduard drew himself up. "Yes?"
"I gather they gave you a down payment. Which is how you were able to afford all this."
"They did."
"And is there —" Tauras winced, hating what he was about to ask — "is there anymore left?"
"Yes."
Tauras' whole body seemed to sigh with relief. "Good. I'm running low on paper. And binding material."
"I can get some later today, if you'd like."
"Yes. I'll write up a list."
"You, um, might want to have a look at our latest venture before you start," Eduard said.
"Oh?"
Eduard reached into his coat, in one of his many concealed pockets, and took out a book. He placed it on the table. Thicker than the prayer books and hymnals Tauras was used to printing, it was at least four-hundred pages. Depending on how many copies were requested, it would definitely use up a fair amount of supplies to reproduce. Tauras picked it up, examining the title. It was in German, and not anything he recognized.
"Is this new?"
Eduard nodded. "The benefactor is a professor at the university in Leipzig. He moved to Germany before the uprising but still has family back in Lithuania. He's been working on that book for quite a few years — even hoped to have it published back home, but..."
"But there's no chance of that now," Tauras murmured. He opened the book and began leafing through it. He soon frowned. "We're going to have to translate this, you know."
"Already covered." Eduard pulled out several notebooks and tossed them on the table. "I finished it on the train yesterday."
"I hope you added your translation services into the price," Tauras remarked.
Eduard laughed but soon stopped when he realized his cousin wasn't joking. "Oh come on, Tauras! We cannot charge for every little thing we do! It'll drive off business."
"I'm aware of that. But you should have tried, at least. This will take far more material than I had planned on purchasing. How many copies are we printing?"
Eduard flinched, his self-assured smirk faltering. "...Uh...twenty-five. B-but we don't have to do them all at once!" he hastily added, seeing the ire beginning to rise in Tauras' face. "I told him we would space it out over five different trips."
"Oh, we would, would we? And that's provided you aren't caught," Tauras snipped.
Eduard folded his arms bristling. "Well, considering I've been doing this for nearly four years now without incident — "
"Yes, yes. You're very elusive." Tauras waved his hand dismissively. He sighed, dropping his head into his hand, rubbing his brow. "And you were planning on leaving when? In a fortnight?"
Eduard nodded.
"That gives us time," Tauras muttered, as if to himself. "Though I still have the newspaper run to finish and the psalm book..."
As Tauras was doing some quick calculations in his head, the air in the kitchen was getting thicker. An acrid, burning smell soon filled the room.
"Shit, the sausages! Eduard, open a window!"
Tauras grabbed a rag, wrapped it around the panhandle, and tipped the burnt meat into the boiling water with the parsnips.
"Don't worry," Eduard coughed, fanning the smoke out, "I'm sure it'll taste fine."
Tauras sank into a chair and raked a hand through his hair. Eduard had been home for barely an hour and already chaos was erupting. He thought again of his tea leaves.
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o
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Later that afternoon, Tauras enlisted Raivis in finishing up the last pages of the psalm book Eduard would take on his next trip, while he began working on the book Eduard had shown him that afternoon.
The sun was beginning to set when Eduard returned with the items from Tauras' list, his face flushed, though not from the cold. He bolted the print shop door behind him. Going over to the window, he twitched the curtain aside, peering up and down the street.
"Ed?" Tauras called, looking up from his press. "Is everything all right?"
Eduard shook his head. "Spike heads. Coming down from the high street."
Tauras' face blanched. "What, they're coming here?"
"I don't know. They turned down an alley three blocks away. But they were heading toward the riverfront."
Tauras cursed under his breath. A visit from Prussian gendarmes — or "spike heads," as Eduard liked to call them — was the last thing he needed. They usually left the Lithuanians alone, but every now and then, they felt the need to reassert their authority. Being a printer, Tauras was already on their watch list. One slip and he could find himself being turned over to the Russian authorities at the border.
Eduard turned away from the window, depositing his purchases on a table in the middle of the room. "We need to clear away these prints."
Tauras nodded and ordered Raivis to take the papers up to their garret bedroom. There was a secret door hidden in the wall which opened to a narrow space that ran along the roof line. Raivis hid the papers under a loose board there, then hastened back downstairs.
Eduard went up to the second floor to watch from the sitting room window as three gendarmes emerged at the riverfront and turned, heading in the direction of his cousin's shop.
"They're getting close," he called downstairs.
Tauras had disassembled the printing plates and began cleaning the ink off the block letters. Raivis was doing the same at his smaller press, when there was a knock at the door.
Tauras looked at Raivis, a warning flashing in his dark eyes as he opened the door. He was greeted by a man wearing a crisp, deep forest green military uniform. The other two gendarmes hung back, gazes sweeping up and down the street.
"Mr. Laurinaitis?"
"Yes."
"I am sergeant-major Beilschmidt, the new senior administrative official for this area. May I come in."
It was a statement rather than a request. One the sergeant-major had been accustomed to making. And one, Tauras felt, with which it would be unwise to argue. He stepped aside. Sergeant-major Beilschmidt entered, removing the point-topped helmet that had inspired Eduard's nickname. His hair was close-cropped and such a startlingly pale shade of blonde that it nearly looked white.
"Your sign outside is filthy," he remarked. "I could hardly make out what it said. You ought to clean it."
"I have. Though some of the local boys think it's funny to throw mud at it."
The sergeant-major made no comment. He strode around the small print shop, stopping to examine the letter drawers and various hand tools.
"Do you typically close your shop so early?"
"No. Although we weren't very busy today."
"Hm. The sign on your door still says 'Open' even though your door was locked."
Tauras swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "Apologies. I...must have forgotten."
Sergeant-major Beilschmidt's haughty face frowned momentarily, as if he were not convinced. His sharp eyes swept over the shop again, this time landing on a young man standing beside a small press at the back. Raivis had been unusually quiet, watching the Prussian apprehensively, no doubt afraid the man was there to cart him away to an orphanage.
"My apprentice," Tauras said, gesturing to Raivis.
The sergeant-major drew a deep breath, back straightening a little more as he turned back to Tauras.
"Your fingers are awfully black, Mr. Laurinaitis, for a printer who hasn't been busy."
Tauras' hands clenched reflexively into fists at his sides. "We've been cleaning the letter blocks and platens," — which wasn't wholly untrue. "Even a little ink can be terribly messy."
The Prussian continued his examination of the shop, eventually stopping at Tauras' desk. He took his time as he rifled through some of the papers, the silence and deliberation of his movements almost unbearable to Tauras. He forced himself to remain still, to keep his hands from reaching out to protect his desk from further defilement.
His impudent tongue, however, was not so easily controlled.
"What exactly does someone in your position — a senior administrative official — do?" he asked, his feigned interest tinged with contempt.
Sergeant-major Beilschmidt had picked up one of the prints that had loosened and fell from its drying line when Eduard arrived earlier that day, scrutinizing every detail. He lowered it, leveling his gaze at Tauras. A shudder seemed to ripple across his face at the question, much the same way Tauras would himself cringe inwardly whenever someone called him a priest.
"Border control, mostly. And enforcing order and discipline." He stepped over to Tauras, handing him the print. "You do remarkable work, Mr. Laurinaitis." A fleeting smile passed over his lips, one that seemed to Tauras oddly genuine. In a blink, however, it was gone. "It is a shame you haven't any more business. Though I dare say if you were to clean your sign, that might help improve your prospects. I have seen all I need to. Good day." The sergeant-major gave a small bow, lips twitching again in what could be a smile, and left.
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o
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The following Sunday, as Tauras was again bringing water down from the pump, the sun's light bounced off something shining, catching his eye as he neared his shop. Squinting around for the source, Tauras eventually looked up and saw it was the gold lettering on his sign.
Someone had cleaned it.
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A/N This fic is based off the Lithuanian book smugglers (Knygnešiai). The book smugglers carried books and newspapers across the border into Lithuania from 1864-1904. Following the failure of the January Uprising in Lithuania and Poland, imperial Russia enforced a ban on the Lithuanian language, as well as all Lithuanian publications. Books and other publications were printed across the border in East Prussia. The first books smuggled into the country were prayerbooks. As desire for national independence grew, political periodicals and newspapers were also snuck in. If caught smuggling books, the penalty ranged from whipping to being deported to prison camps in Siberia.
January Uprising: referenced in Tauras' dream/memory at the beginning, it began largely from a desire by Poland to return to the semi-autonomous status from before the insurgency in 1830 (the November Uprising). The movement spread and eventually erupted in Lithuania in February 1863. The priest in Kaunas is a reference to Antanas Mackevičius, a Lithuanian priest who led a squad of rebels in Kaunas. Considering they were only armed with scythes and pitchforks, this squad was remarkable for their stamina during the fighting. The insurgency was eventually overcome due to break downs in leadership and many of the fighters were either executed or sent to Siberia.
Raivis is from where? Livonia. Latvia, as we know it today, did not exist at the time this fic takes place. Riga had a strong German population and German was the official language of administration until Russian in 1891. So in this fic, Raivis speaks German.
Tilsit was a town in East Prussia, now present-day Sovetsk in Kaliningrad Oblast, situated along the Memel river (Neman in Russian).
Printing: the Gutenberg press was still widely in use at this time. There were a few innovations in printing, namely the steam-driven rotary press developed in the United States, but it took awhile to catch on internationally. Estimated printing times using the Gutenberg press: approximately 25 pages per hour.
Prussian Feldgendarmerie (of which Gilbert is a part) were a military police unit composed of infantry and cavalry non-commissioned officers. Though they were military personnel, in times of peace, they served as a town's police force. One of the most distinguishing features of their uniform (besides the large metal gorgets worn around the neck) was the pickelhaube helmet which featured a large spike coming out the top to deflect sword blows aimed at the head.
Yes, I did change Toris' name to Tauras in this fic. There's been debate in the fandom as to what his name actually should be because of issues with translating the Japanese. Plus, since I am using place names and actual Lithuanian given names in the story, I wanted Tauras' name to reflect that too, so I changed it.
This fic will alternate between flashbacks between Tauras' time before and after the uprising and the present time in East Prussia. We'll also find out a bit more Eduard, too ;). Thanks for reading!