Chapter 6: Stay, I Pray You

The train station - one of the few still operational here in the former St. Petersburg - was boisterous and crowded, the atmosphere tinged with something almost on the verge of panic. Desperate travelers were buying tickets, shoving papers up the noses of the passage collectors, the travel officials left with little to determine whether the document was genuine or forged.

Mona felt herself shiver as Chandler leaned into her, coaching her in a hushed whisper. "Act like you belong. Above all, act confident."

He needn't have told her that last part - confidence, she had proved she had in spades when fighting against his and Ross's old associates. Chandler now squirted them both up to Ross's side at the ticket booth and launched into a profusely apologetic and adorably flustered spiel that Mona would have believed, had she not known him or his abilities at obfuscation. The ticket taker was even less of a match for him; charmed by Chandler's dashingly handsome good looks and silver tongue, she was putty in his hands. She barely glanced at the forged papers Ross had procured from somewhere; still less attention she paid to the cash transaction, although her eyes did widen upon sight of Mona's diamond, which was promptly scuttled away, accepted for the bribe that it was.

Their phony passports stamped, Chandler grabbed as many of their bags as he could carry, which really amounted to two of them - one for him and Ross each. Poor Mona carried nothing but the clothes on her back. Glancing nervously at the guards patrolling the platform and trying to maintain some semblance of order, the trio raced for the train and leapt aboard.

As Mona made to follow the men... her foot caught on the boarding step and she stumbled.

An aged hand reached out and steadied her, catching and bracing her fall.

"Oh, thank you, sir..." Glancing up into the kind face of an elderly man, Mona flashed a weak smile of thanks, frustrated at her own clumsiness.

The elderly gentleman, however, now suddenly seemed transfixed, beady and aged eyes widening in a strange sort of recognition.

"Printsessa... Monichivna..." He murmured both the title in Russian and the royal name reverently, and actually made a show of kneeling before the peasant girl. Just inside the alcove of the train car, Chandler and Ross witnessed the exchange with bemused, even baffled looks. They glanced at each other and shared a bewildered shrug.

Mona bit her lip, embarrassed. "Sir, I pray you, please, stand! I am no princess here..."

"Printsessa... Printsessa..." the old gentleman was continuing to murmur with genuflection.

"She is truly as lovely as one, though, is she not?" Chandler moved between Mona and the old man, laughing boisterously, though there was a tight nervousness to the sound. "A vision of rare beauty..." Stealing an arm around Mona, he hustled her onboard and into the train corridor. "Crazy old coot is gonna get us all shot!" he growled through gritted teeth as soon as they were out of hearing range. He glanced over at his buddy, who appeared shaken, even moved. "What in the name of the Stasi is the matter with you?"

"Do you know who that was?" Ross demanded, as the three of them muscled their way into a compartment and Chandler started to swing their bags into the overhead stowage. "That was Count Ipolitov."

Chandler glanced back, befuddled. "Am I supposed to know who that is?"

"Well, no, but..."

"Oh, I'm sorry - let me rephrase that: am I supposed to care who that is?"

Ross bristled. "He was a member in good standing of the Tsar's Imperial Court!"

Chandler merely felled him with a pointed look. "Which is more good standing than you were in..." he muttered under his breath. Next to him, he could feel Mona glancing between them with interest, but she didn't ask questions. For Ross's sake, that was probably for the best.

"Chandler:" Ross grabbed for his younger compatriot. "If a member of the Imperial Court thinks she's the princess..." He tilted his head discreetly towards where Mona was taking a seat by the window, his lips pursed with emphasis.

Ross did raise an excellent point, and Chandler felt a wellspring of hope bubble in his chest. If they could fool a member of the Imperial Court into thinking their street urchin was Monica, they could possibly, just maybe, fool the Grand Duchess Phoebe Althea. This plan was going to work!...

Still, Chandler didn't relax until the train was pulling out of St. Petersburg station. Through the glass of the window, crowds were pressing in on the locomotive, waving handkerchiefs and bidding their loved ones goodbye. An old song wafted through the air:

"Stay, I pray you, let me have a moment. Let me say goodbye... To bridge and river, forest and waterfall, orchard, sea and sky... Harsh and sweet and bitter to leave it all... I'll bless my homeland till I die..."

The melody still clung to Chandler's ears as the train began to thunder through the tundra countryside of Mother Russia.


Before very long, Ross and Chandler, flush with pulling off the most dangerous part of their heist, were all but punch-drunk and singing a song of their own:

"I went to see the Doctor of Philosophy!... with a poster of Rasputin, and a beard down to his knees. He never did marry, or see a B-grade movie. He graded my performance, and he said he could see through me! So I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was FREE!..."

Listening to the boisterous folk song, Mona suddenly started from where she had been half paying attention while staring raptly out the window at the passing fields. "Oh! Gregor Rasputin. He was the medicine man for the royal family. And the Tsar's most trusted adviser."

"Very good, Mona!" Chandler praised, though the exclamation in his voice quickly petered out when he caught Ross shaking his head at him in incredulous astonishment. By that, the young man knew: that bit of trivia hadn't been on the quizzes and in the lessons they had drilled into their protégé. His eyes widened in amazement and deep confusion.

There was an awkward silence, in the interim of which Ross lowered his ukelele from where he had been accompanying and stared at it silently for several seconds. At last...

"... I knew I should have accompanied on the bagpipes instead."

Chandler gave him a pointed look. "You left your bagpipes inRussia!"

"Oh. Right..."

Mona glanced between her friends with amusement. "What will we do when we get to Paris?"

"Well, Your Grace, first... we'll go to the theatre..." Ross extolled.

"The Grand Duchess is a frequent patron of the opera - all the great classics," Chandler explained. "We'll... announce you. Seek an audience with her Highness..."

"... and hopefully, with her fetching lady in waiting!" Ross twittered.

Chandler snorted scoffingly. "Don't start!"

"You laugh, my boy, but, one day, you'll learn!" And Ross darted a meaningful look between Mona and Chandler. "Why, you might be, even now, feeling the sweeping lust of attraction..."

"ATTRACTION?!" Chandler exploded, leaping to his feet, taking not at all kindly to whatever folly Ross was insinuating. "Listen to the man! Attraction!" he ranted, throwing up his hands. Though he was oddly careful to not look at Mona.

Mona's sapphire eyes sparkled. "Are you in love with the Duchess's lady's maid, Ross?"

"Yes..." Ross bemoaned piningly. "Her name is Reychel... She is my little bon bon of guilty pleasures... We had quite the passionate affair, you know, when the royals were in power. Only to be torn apart by war itself when the Bolsheviks stormed the palace and the dynasty fell..."

Chandler scoffed, folding one leg up over the other and turning away while muttering darkly.

"When we get to Paris, I shall reunite with her, proclaim my undying love for her which has never faded, and hope that she shall be amenable to wed, if she'll have me..." Ross was painting a picture of domesticity so saccharine, Chandler could have gagged on it.

Mona sighed wistfully. "It sounds so romantic... She'll have you, Ross. I'm sure of it!" Ross blushed pink at the vote of confidence. Mona sighed again. "I just want to find out what the words in my locket mean."

"You mean the words engraved in the...?" Chandler's voice trailed off. It was the most interest he had taken in the conversation since Ross's teasing.

"Mmm-hmm," Mona nodded, lips pursed. "Together in Paris... Someone cared enough about me to want to bring me with them there... I wish I could remember who..."

Chandler studied her for a long moment, and he swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "Someone still does care for you," he assured her.

Mona smiled softly. "Thanks..."

There was a long moment in which the pair gazed, transfixed, into each other's eyes. The spell was broken by Ross clearing his throat.

"Well... unless this benefactor you speak of is dead."

"Ross!" Chandler snapped in a bawling whine of annoyance.

Suddenly, there came from further down the corridor what sounded like a BANG! Ross's mustache quivered and he wiggled disconcertingly in his seat.

"Good heavens! That sounded like the crack of a gunshot!"

As the trio listened, they could now hear the noises of running feet. Doors being slammed and shouting. All at once, a palm slapped against the glass of their compartment door before falling away, leaving behind a bloody handprint.

Mona cried out in startled shock and fear.

Chandler lunged forward and wrenched open the door. Before him, doubling over onto his knees in pain was the old coot who had helped Mona on the train platform and called her royalty. Count Ipolitov.

Taking the man around his middle, Chandler hauled him into the compartment, lying his sprawled form flat on the carpet between the seats. Ipolitov was quivering, his gaze quickly landing and fixing on a frozen and shaken Mona.

"Printsessa... Printsessa..." He was babbling. His face was rapidly turning a ghastly pallor. "A kiss from my printsessa..."

Blinking back tears, Mona knelt at the old man's side and held his hand as he languished in his death throes. Bending, she tenderly brushed her lips in a kiss along his cheek. A ghostly smile stole across Ipolitov's face, and then he lay still.

There was no time for Chandler to dissolve into hysteria or panic, though his movements where nonetheless urgent as he felt along the lining of Ipolitov's coat, his trousers. Checked all the pockets.

"Chandler...?" Mona asked, scared.

"I knew it," he clipped, his voice almost cryptic. "No passport. No papers of any kind." He glanced up into the frightened and wide-eyed stares of his accomplices. "Ipolitov was an illegal boarder. Some street rats call it jumping the trains."

Ross made a genuflective swipe through the air with his hands. "He was a far braver man than us, then..."

"Which now has made him a deader man than us, if we don't get off this train NOW!" Chandler lunged for their bags, windmilling them off the luggage rack with such force that he came close to nearly whacking Mona, and then Ross, in the eye.

Outside the compartment, the angry shouts were coming closer.

"Chandler, where are we going...?"

"Well, put it this way, Your Highness: I'd hate to see you traveling amidst all these commoners..." Chandler quipped sardonically. He grabbed her arm. "Come on: we need to be gone!"

The trio staggered out into the corridor... just as a pair of Russian soldiers rounded the corner at the far end of the hallway.

"There! It's her! Shoot them!"

Chandler muttered an oath and shoved Ross towards the door leading between train cars, while simultaneously throwing Mona in front of him. "MOVE!"

Shots rang out, the pings ricocheting off the walls but not hitting the three fugitives. Mona yelped and lengthened her stride. Ross ran ahead and opened the door between cars for them. A gust of wind briefly buffeted the trio as they leapt, all but flew across the small expanse into the boxcar behind, sealing the door shut behind them just ahead of the Russian guards.

"I thought you said our tickets were good!" Chandler barked angrily at Ross. The hapless fake-nobleman could only answer with a sheepish shrug.

Suppressing a growl, and trying to ignore the banging on the door with rifle butts and angry demands to open up in the name of Vladimir Lenin, Chandler ran to the door running lengthwise of the entire boxcar and pulled it aside. Snow flurries and gale winds howled and swirled around the three of them. Chandler peered over the edge and all he could see was snowbanks rocketing beneath. Good. They weren't over a gorge, a river or any kind of expanse...

He glanced ahead, and even in the midst of the snowstorm, he spotted the darkened outlines of a train trestle just ahead.

They weren't over any expanse... but they would be soon if they didn't...

"This is our stop!" He called.

Ross peered over the edge and turned a sickly shade of puce. "After you!"

Chandler was having none of it, seizing the man by the lapel of his coat. "You're gonna have toJUMP!"

Ross jumped off. Well, it was really more like he was thrown off, by his friend.

PING, PING! PING! Chandler whirled around in panic and glanced back - the guards were trying to shoot their way in by blowing off the lock of the boxcar door!

He took a deep breath and steeled himself, bracing to leap. "Time to go, Princess!"

"Wait!" Before Chandler knew what was happening, he was being spun, with his skull held firmly in place. All at once, Mona's lips were on his as she pulled him close and deeply, firmly, but all too briefly, kissed him. "For luck!" she rasped, eyes wild when they sharply broke apart.

Slightly dazed at her passionate display in the name of good fortune, Chandler only had enough of his wits about him for his fingers to find and clasp hers.

Hand in hand, and just ahead of their would-be captors, the couple leapt out of the boxcar into empty air, disappearing into the night and the swirl of the blizzard.