“I’m sorry,” she heard over her shoulder. “I was a fool.”

“We both were,” she said, remembering that it was she who had encouraged him to hand over the second diamond. “Anyone who trusts another Russian,” she added bitterly, “is a fool.”

Taking his hand, she led him across the field, favoring her bad foot, which had accumulated many blisters on their journey, and back toward the cliffs where she had seen the dismal huts. Halfway there, she saw several figures approaching — three men, squat and broad, swathed in fur coats, with their hoods thrown back and something odd about their faces. It was only as they came closer that she saw the men had ivory disks, the size of coins, implanted in their jutting, lower lips. She knew that these must be the Eskimos; with their wide, weather-beaten features, high cheekbones and black eyes, they reminded her of the Mongolian trick riders who had once performed at Tsarskoe Selo for her parents’ anniversary.

Ana and Sergei stopped and let the men close the remaining distance. The two younger ones stood back, while the third, with woolly gray eyebrows and leaning on a staff, raised a bare hand and said, “Da?” Yes.

Ana did not know what to reply. The man was looking around, as if he, too, was puzzled at the lack of a plane, a pilot, or any explanation for their being there.

“Da?” he repeated, and she wasn’t sure he understood what he was saying himself.

“My name is Ana,” she said, “and this is Sergei.”

The old man nodded.

How, she wondered, should she continue? “I’m afraid that we may need your help.” Did he understand any other words of Russian?

“We want to go to St. Peter’s Island,” Sergei spoke up, pointing off to the east. “Saint. Peter’s. Island.”

“Kanut,” he said, lightly touching his fingers to the front of his coat.

Ana, smiling tightly, repeated their own names, and the old man nodded in agreement again. “Do you speak Russian?” she asked.

“Da.” Then added, “Some words.”

Thank God, she thought. It might be possible to make themselves understood, after all, but before she could begin, he had turned around and was heading back toward the cliffs. She could only assume that they were meant to follow, especially as his two henchmen waited for them to go on before bringing up the rear. Bewildered as she was, she did not feel threatened, as she would have with her own countrymen.

The village, if you could call it that, was not far off. She could hear huskies barking and smell smoke before she saw the huts again; there were no more than ten or fifteen of them, and they were the crudest structures she had ever seen, low piles of stone with skins stretched across the tops to make a roof. Steep trails led down the cliff to a sliver of rocky beach where canoes and kayaks were laid upside down across racks made of whalebone. Raised on its own poles was a wooden lifeboat with the name Carpathia, in Russian, still faintly legible on its side. Sergei squeezed her hand and with the other pointed off across the Bering Strait. In the distance, like a black fist rising from the sea, she could just make out a tiny island, oddly surrounded, even on a clear day like this, with a belt of fog.

The old man bent low and lifting a sealskin flap ducked into one of the hovels. Within, Ana was surprised to find the room so warm and spacious. The hard ground was covered with many layers of pelts and furs, haphazardly overlapping each other, and two women, as short and broad as the men, were tending to a primitive hearth with a tin chimney spout in the corner. Ana heard the bubbling of a samovar and smelled the surprising aroma of Indian tea. When one of the women, smiling with worn-down yellowed teeth, brought them the tea, it was in chipped china cups with gold rims and Carpathia written on them again. Ana had the strong sense that these things had all been salvaged from a wreck of the same name.

But it was clear to her that Kanut was doing his best to show them the royal treatment. And though no sugar or lemon or milk was on offer, not to mention the traditional tea cakes, beautifully decorated and arrayed, that she had once been so accustomed to, it was the most welcoming and delicious cup of tea she had ever been served. Much as her heart had hardened since Ekaterinburg, she was equally touched by any small display of human kindness.

“How did you learn to speak Russian?” she asked, carefully enunciating each word. Shrugging off his coat, the old man revealed an embroidered, deerskin vest fastened with whalebone buttons, and a little carved figure of a bear hanging down around his neck. She wondered if it was a bear that also adorned the plate in his lip.

“Traders,” he said. “I work on ships.” He held up an arm, hand clenched as if to hurl a harpoon. “Ten year.”

At her side, Sergei radiated impatience, and she put a calming hand on his arm. “Drink the tea,” she said gently, “it will refresh you,” before thanking their host directly. Despite the strange surroundings, she felt as if she were back in one of the imperial palaces, welcoming a delegation from one of the far-flung outposts of the empire. Her family had once ruled nearly a sixth of the globe, and now she was reduced to the clothes on her back and the treasures in her corset. How thankful she was, yet again, that she had had the foresight to wear it, rather than stuffing it in their stolen bundle.

For several minutes, they haltingly talked about his adventures at sea — he had apparently traveled through most of the Arctic regions, hunting beavers, walruses, seals, whales — but Ana could sense the pressure building in Sergei. He kept crossing and recrossing his legs, clearing his throat, even coughing. Finally, when he could stand it no more, he broke in to say, “Can we hire you, or some of your men, to take us across to the island? We will gladly pay you whatever you want.”

Although the old man smiled politely, Ana could tell he was offended at having his colloquy interrupted. He seldom had a new listener, she imagined. But when he shook his head, it was with more than petty annoyance.

“No. Not there,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Bad luck,” he said, his fingers unconsciously grazing the ivory bear around his neck.

Was it his good-luck charm, Ana wondered? His equivalent of the emerald cross beneath her blouse?

“Is it because the Russian settlers are there?” Sergei pressed on. “I can promise you, they will do you no harm. They are followers of a great man, a holy man, known as Father Grigori.”

But the old man was as stolid and impassive as a boulder.

“He was also called Rasputin,” Sergei said. “Surely you have heard of him by that name.”

“Place for spirits,” he said, of the island. “I tell them, do not go there. Place for the dead. Do not go.”

Ana had the impression that he was saying it was a holy place for the Eskimos, sacred ground that the colonists had defiled by their very presence. Even that one glimpse of it that she had had confirmed her suspicions. It was a forbidding spot.

But Sergei was not to be dissuaded. For that matter, neither was she. They could hardly return to Russia now, and they had come all this way to find a safe harbor, if only for a year or two, until the world had come to its senses and the Reds had been turned out of power as ruthlessly as they had taken it. No, she was as determined as Sergei to reach their destination, especially now that it was within sight.

“Well, then, if you don’t want to go,” Sergei said, “what about selling us one of those boats down on the beach? The one from the Carpathia?” He held up his cup and pointed at the word on his teacup.

Kanut frowned.

“How much do you want for it?” Sergei went on, glancing at Anastasia. Reaching inside her coat, she drew out the drawstring bag in which they kept their ready bribes, and Sergei opened it, rummaged around inside, and took out a sparkling yellow diamond. He held it out toward the old man. “It’s worth a thousand rubles. And what’s that wooden boat worth?”