The Cantacuzene Family Crest
(Quae Nocent Docent – What Harms, Teaches)
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books
PROLOGUE
The Waters Off Greenland
September 1899
The steamship surges forward, its prow lifting and falling over the swells of the North Atlantic. At each new wave, the ship hesitates and shudders, leaning backward towards America, only to regain its balance atop the next frothy crest, propelling its cargo ever closer to Russia.
Standing on the ship’s first-class deck, Julia and Mikhail observe the dance of waves. He takes Julia’s hand in his and she turns to face him, her head bundled up in a scarf against the wind. Her other hand rests on the satin lapel of his tuxedo. She thinks of the time they have spent together since their first meeting. Was that only three months ago? She was busy organizing her wedding almost that entire time, constantly surrounded by family members while he was in Russia with his regiment. While exhilarating, their whirlwind of courtship left her little time for reflection on the prince or his family.
Only since they sailed from New York has she had a chance to contemplate their future, her feelings and her fears. Loneliness envelops her, a solitary figure adrift with a stranger on an endless sea.
With each dip forward, spray rises off the ship’s bow. Seagulls float beside them, suspended in mid-air by the wind. The northern sun, a dull red gleam veiled by clouds, descends towards the horizon where the seas and skies blend into one. Below them, waves that were azure and welcoming a few minutes ago harden into an inky blackness.
Her palms sweat despite the cold, her mind reels with uncertainties. This is what she wanted. He is the one she wanted, more than anyone or anything else. Now, though, she is elated and terrified of what she has done. Of what is to come.
How much do I really know about this man?
She has a sense of who he is, without doubt, but it is only that, a sense, a construct in her own mind. She has built her assumptions upon assumptions, and countless blanks still await filling in. She wants to hear more from him, about how they will live their lives together, about what awaits her at the end of this voyage.
Mikhail scans the first-class promenade to make sure they are alone. He breaks the silence. “Julia cherie, I need to discuss a delicate matter with you. You may find it embarrassing.” He speaks in French, the only language they can both converse in.
She suspects she is about to hear a prepared speech. Gazing into his eyes, unwavering, she responds, “Don’t worry, my love. There should be nothing too embarrassing to take up amongst ourselves.”
He continues, addressing the necessity for a boy, a son to secure their lineage. “And the sooner the better. Otherwise, the estate would slip over to my younger brother.”
Julia knows well the precariousness of her new role as the wife of Prince Mikhail Mikhailovsky Cantacuzene, Count Speransky. Her standing in his family, his world, will depend on her success in producing a son. Moreover, with a son will come comfort and relief, the security of knowing that her new riches and titles will remain intact even if something happens to her new husband.
She masks her discomfort with a smile. “Of course. I understand these obligations. I know the rules are different where I’m going. Aunt Bertha and I looked into such matters in some detail. And I can assure you that the Grant women have proven themselves a fertile lot.”
She sees him blush a little under his pointed goatee. Was she too bold with that comment?
“What will we name him?” she inquires playfully.
A puzzled look. “He will be named Mikhail, of course. Just like me. Named after the Archangel Mikhail. All the eldest sons in both the Speransky and the Cantacuzene lines have been named Mikhail, followed by Mikhailovsky. It’s been that way for centuries.”
“That will make things very confusing, won’t it? Two Mikhails running around?”
“We can call him a nickname. Misha.”
She ponders this. “Or Michael. We can call him Mike. Or Mickey.” She lets out a laugh.
He doesn’t answer, turning to gaze at the waves, his expression fixed. Bertha had warned her that Russians see excessive smiling as a sign of weakness. So far, Bertha has been right about everything. She keeps her eyes on the side of his face, noticing how his waxed goatee and mustache tips glisten in the last moments of dusk.
The tang of salt air tickles her tongue as the gulls and the wind sing to each other in harmony. A crewman approaches in the distance, stopping to light the lamps on the promenade deck. As darkness falls, Mikhail takes her hand and they walk back towards their cabin. There is an urgency in his grasp. All her questions will have to wait.
He throws open the doors to the first-class stateroom with a flourish. A light scent of cedar smoke from the fireplace wafts up to them. The flames of the crackling logs flicker across the walls, combining with the ship’s sway and the breath of the wind to create a sense of ceaseless motion. Leading her through the drawing room to the bedroom, his inexperienced hands fumble with the stays of her crinoline petticoat while she undoes his bow tie. Corset and cummerbund tossed aside, the young Russian prince and the new American princess embrace and fall into bed. The starched sheets rustle with their movement. Even after four nights on the ship they are still new at this, fingertips finding and caressing patches of yet untouched skin for the first time, lips pressed together with an immediate hunger.
The thud of the ship’s engines, seven decks below them, resonates in cadence with the rhythm of their bodies. With the Atlantic Ocean sliding under their ship, they ride the currents, surrendering to the roar and rush of the swell. They don’t know exactly where they are on the globe but it doesn’t matter. Somewhere off the tip of Greenland, at roughly 30 degrees west longitude, exactly halfway between Russia and America, drained and exhausted, they complete their self-appointed task. Unknown to either of them and against all odds, their first son now accompanies them to Russia to claim his rightful place as the heir to the Cantacuzene estate.
Mikhail falls asleep with one arm across her waist as Julia lies on her back and stares at the ceiling of the cabin. The year has streaked by in a flash. Three months ago she had never heard of this man. Now, three months the other way lies the turn of the century, bringing with it visions of enchanted palaces and fairy tales in a foreign land she has never visited. She sees bulbous domes, men squatting while they dance, women with scarves on their heads, frozen white lakes covered with snow spreading wider than the ocean. She is too nervous to sleep, too excited to let this moment pass over to slumber.
A smatter of raindrops lays a drumroll across the windows of the cabin. As the storm strengthens, the waves deepen, and a gale begins to howl. The ship lurches from side to side as nature’s forces wrestle to control its direction. The bed tilts back and forth. Behind them a propellor turns slowly, steadily, with purpose, pushing them into the oncoming swell. At the top of each crest, America pulls Julia backward, and towards the bottom of every trough, Russia beckons her forward.
1. THE WHITE HOUSE
“Fred is a splendid fellow and I think not the least spoiled yet.”
– President Ulysses S Grant, in a letter to Abel Corbin, his brother-in-law.
“Grant’s love for his children is an amiable weakness, not only pardonable, but attracting the love of all who do not suffer the consequences.”
– General William Tecumseh Sherman in a letter to his son.
1876
Lieutenant Colonel Fred Grant paces the grand corridor, unaware that his unborn daughter is about to save his life. He is not even sure, at this very moment, whether he has a son or a daughter. The marble beneath his spurred boots echoes his restlessness. Just arrived from South Dakota’s Black Hills, he’s garbed in full regalia, oak leaves on his shoulder straps and a sword in the scabbard at his belt, a constant reminder to others of his role as General George Armstrong Custer’s aide. Fred’s regiment is on the scent of the Indians, and he is impatient to rejoin them.
But now, a duty of another kind demands his attention. This child will be his first. She is not yet born, but he expects her arrival at any moment. Having been away for most of his wife’s pregnancy, he has not given fatherhood much thought until the long train journey from South Dakota to Washington. A new role with all its mysteries waits for him behind the carved door in front of him. He fights a sudden urge to retreat, forcing himself instead to turn and face the unknown dangers behind that door.
He hears distant voices and looks down the hallway, the lofty walls adorned with ornate frescoes and portraits of stern old men in beards. It is a place of strange acoustics, with vibrations and whispers of ghosts, ancient footprints journeying along floorboards under quivering marble statues. President Grant’s bedchamber lies not too far that way. Beyond a windowpane, the clamor of construction for the nation’s first centennial celebration punctuates the air.
He sees the President approaching with the First Lady, two tiny figures dwarfed by the immensity of the passageway. He strides to meet them, spurs and heels ringing loudly.
“Mother, am I in the right place? Should I go inside her room or will they bring me the baby?”
The president throws back his head and laughs, his teeth and face obscured by a thick black beard. The First Lady attempts to wrap her short arms around Fred in a hug.
“Don’t worry, Fred. They’ll tell you when it’s time. I was in there a few minutes ago, and all was going as well as could be expected.”
“Oh, that is grand to hear!” exclaims Fred. “As I explained to General Custer just a few days ago, I should….” He stops as the carved door opens with a clicking of metal, the sound of a bolt being drawn. The president’s physician beckons.
Ida Marie Grant lies back inside the room, drained after a long labor. She gasps for breath as a nurse wipes away the pearls of sweat from her brow. Prepared as she was for pain and danger, she declined the opium offered by the doctor in a valiant bid to greet her child fully present. She vows that never again will she repeat this folly should God grace her with another child.
Fred enters slowly, not knowing what awaits him. The room smells of sweat and blood and wet and earth, reminding him of nothing so much as a battlefield. A nurse in a white uniform gathers piles of towels together. Fred catches a flash of red as she stuffs them into a bucket in the corner. Three other nurses stand at attention in a line on the far side of the bed. Fred kneels next to the bed to kiss his wife, his scabbard clattering on the floor, smiling at the crying baby on her breast. He stays kneeling, holding her hand and stroking the crying baby gently with his other hand.
The President and the diminutive First Lady follow close behind, joyous tears coursing down her face. All eyes look to the President, as they invariably do when he enters a room. He pats Fred on the crown of his head where he kneels. Pausing a moment for introspection, he recalls the day in St Louis so many years ago when he, too, knelt beside his wife and stroked a crying newborn boy. Separated from his family for long periods because of too many wars, he wishes he had spent more time with Fred and his other children. He prays that Fred will not let his own career lead him down the same road of guilt and yearning.
The President says a few words, claps his hands together and the entire room stands back and applauds Ida Marie for a performance worthy of a president’s daughter-in-law. All eyes are on her as she manages a weak smile of acknowledgment. The moment passes, and the president backs out of the room alone, returning to face the scandals and squabbles that punctuate his second term in office.
Three days later, the infant girl is christened in a ceremony in the great East Room. A stern George Washington glares down from a colossal portrait on the wall, uniformed, hand resting on his sword hilt. Cooing and squirming in her white lace finery, she is pronounced Julia Dent Grant, the namesake of her grandmother, the First Lady. Mesmerized by the giant glass chandeliers in the ceiling, she stares upwards as her little chubby hand wraps around her mother’s pinky finger. Fred stands next to his wife, his hand on her back, gazing into Julia’s eyes of deep brown. Behind them, peering around Fred at his granddaughter, President Grant allows a small smile to break across his otherwise solemn face.
Around them stand a small number of cabinet secretaries and their wives. Fred turns and catches the eye of a tall man with a lean, creased face. General William Tecumseh Sherman, the scourge of Atlanta, stands behind the President, his deep-set eyes glowering at Fred. Fred turns away but still feels his piercing gaze on the back of his head. A twinge from his old bullet wound strikes his calf, making him wince.
Will this man never forget, Fred thinks? Is it West Point on his mind now, or is it Vicksburg that he uses to accuse me? With all the carnage he has surely seen, even caused, why does he still cultivate such animosity for me? Any offense I may have committed is a trifle in comparison to what he himself has done.
Fred resolves to avoid Sherman through the rest of the ceremony, maybe for the rest of his life if at all possible.
Within a few days, cast adrift with no pressing duty after the christening, Fred roams the halls of the White House in search of his father. He is a familiar sight to the secretaries and staff who inhabit the hallways and cubbyhole offices of the building. He often appears unannounced, his arrival marked by jangling spurs and a disregard for protocol. Finding the door of the Oval Office closed to him, he suspects he is being deliberately shunned. He cannot fathom why the President does not find the time to take a deeper interest in his son’s life. The horizons of his military career still stretch ahead of him. Soon it will be time to return to South Dakota, and he hungers to regale his father with ideas for a successful campaign. A swift victory should impress his father, and as he has learned, it is not easy to impress a president who won the Civil War and united a country.
Fred takes a seat outside the Oval Office as a string of men in white hair and dark suits enter and exit in succession. A few greet Fred, some shaking his hand, congratulating him on his daughter’s birth. He has known most of them since he was a teenager. Some try to pat him on the head as they leave, but he tilts his neck out of their reach, irritated by their familiarity.
Sensing a momentary break in the procession, Fred jumps up and enters his father’s office. The President sits at the far end of the room in his shirtsleeves, dwarfed by the large desk in front of him. Enormous windows stand open behind him, but there is no breeze to dispel the summer heat and the haze of cigar smoke that hangs in the room. Flies buzz in and out of the windows. Cows graze just beyond the marching grounds along the banks of the shimmering Potomac River.
“Father, can you spare some time?”
Grant looks up and examines his son. He stands with his hat in his hands, decked out in his dress uniform. Twenty-six years old and now a father, but he is still a little boy at heart, always needing attention. Even at full height and in lavish regalia he seems so unlike a military man.
“Of course, Fred. It’s nice to have you home. How is little Julia?”
“She’s just a tiny baby, father. She sleeps all day, as does Ida Marie. I can’t even get near them with all the servants in the nursery. I may as well return to South Dakota where I am more urgently needed. But first I must speak with you.”
“I see. What’s on your mind?”
“General Custer asked me to brief you on our advances in the Black Hills.”
“Custer,” sighs the President. “I am told he has been causing quite a ruckus with the Lakota.”
“He’s a fierce leader, father. A real fighter. I’m honored to serve on his staff. He told me the Indian Wars are the only place where a young man can make his mark these days.”
A gruff voice comes from behind Fred. “Custer’s made his mark, indeed. But more as a gambler and a womanizer than a fighter.” Startled, he turns to see General Sherman sitting on the sofa behind him.
He and the President make a curious couple. Sherman is an intimidating presence, even sitting on the sofa, in contrast to Grant, stocky, squat and serious.
Sherman addresses the president, ignoring Fred. “Honestly, Grant, what I see in Custer is a showman. Today, I saw a newspaper report showing him posed in buckskin, blond mane flowing. They write stories of his courage and bravery. I see nothing brave about killing women and children.”
Fred, caught off guard, struggles to compose himself. Under his dress tunic, rivulets of sweat drip from his armpits.
The president intervenes. “Now, General, let’s not talk ill of Fred’s commanding officer.”
Sherman, undeterred, continues his tirade. “I’ll tell you what else I see in Custer. I see a puppeteer’s hand. I see Custer’s marionette strings on you, Fred, leading back to this office. Tell me, did he tell you to come in here and sing his praises?”
“General, please.” This time Grant’s voice is loud and firm. “Fred, you will have to excuse General Sherman. He speaks his mind too frankly sometimes. Now, what is it that you wish to tell me?”
Fred squirms. He looks back at Sherman, who remains on the sofa in a relaxed pose, showing no sign of getting up to leave.
The president follows Fred’s gaze. “You can say what you like in front of General Sherman, son. He is as interested as I am in the progress of Custer’s campaign. Now what’s on your mind?”
Fred thinks better of his prepared speech. “Nothing, Father,” he says, his shoulders slumping. “Except that I wish to return to the Black Hills and join General Custer. Some big battles lie ahead.”
“Of course, son. You should return and do your duty.”
The president turns to Sherman as the door closes behind Fred. “Cump, you’re Secretary of the Army now. These swipes at Custer will find their way into the ranks. And aren’t you being a little harsh with the boy? He takes these criticisms of Custer personally. He told me he transferred from your staff because he felt you were too exacting of him.”
“Perhaps. I was harsh in my discipline, Grant, but he needs it.” The president flinches at Sherman’s casual use of his name. He starts to correct him but thinks better of it. They have been close friends since their teenage days together at West Point and have maintained a familiar style of talk through all of it.
“You might recall that you yourself asked me to whip Fred into shape,” says Sherman. “That’s why I took him upon my staff.”
“Yes, but then he was a new officer, just out of West Point. Remember when we were plebes ourselves? It wasn’t easy.”
“You know there is much more to the issue than that. You and I managed to do well at West Point, and since we’re sitting in the Oval Office at this moment, I would venture that maybe we have done passably well since.”
“Now Cump, you can’t seriously compare Fred to you and me. It’s not fair. How many children can live up to fathers like us? And why, for heaven’s sake, would we even wish our lives upon them? So many things that I pray I’d never done, never seen.” He sighs. “Fred just needed some growing up, that’s all. You’re too tough on him.”
“Grant, I know you love your boy, but have you forgotten what Fred did at West Point?”
“You still bring up that incident with the negro cadet? A minor transgression, no more than hazing, as happens there frequently.”
“That was not hazing, Grant, that was persecution. And in the end, it was the negro boy who was punished and expelled, not your son. After everything you and I fought for in the Civil War, with all those boys dead, I would think Fred could find someone else to pick a fight with. Anyone else. That boy would have been the first negro cadet to graduate from West Point. Instead, he went home, and Fred took his spot, but at the bottom of the class.”
Grant looks down at the paper on his desk with pursed lips. “Cump, I will not debate this issue one more time. Just go easy on the boy. He seems quite fond of Custer, and he seems very happy in his new role.”
Grant picks up his papers on his desk and pretends to read them.
Fred returns to his room to pack, fuming over his meeting in the Oval Office. Sherman still mocks me, even though I took a bullet in the leg at Vicksburg. I have proven my bravery in battle. Where are his bullet wounds?
An orderly knocks on his door and enters the room. Fred stays bent over his suitcase, his back to the door.
“What is it?” says Fred in an irritated tone. “Do you always enter without being invited?”
The man salutes. “I’m sorry, sir. I have urgent news.”
“Well, speak up, boy.”
“General Sherman wanted me to convey a battle report that he said you would have interest in. General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry engaged the Lakota and Cheyenne forces earlier today.”
“Oh no!” says Fred, turning to face the messenger. “This day gets worse with each passing minute. Have I missed the big fight?”
“Sir, early reports are that General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were ambushed by a large number of Sitting Bull’s warriors.”
Fred’s feet are leaden now, frozen in place. “How many casualties?”
“They’re all dead, sir.”
“Who? The Indians?” Seeing the look on the orderly’s face, he exclaims, “What? No. That’s impossible. Two hundred fifty men, all dead?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but multiple witnesses have confirmed the report. They say it was a massacre.”
“It ca-can’t be,” he stammers. Custer had never regarded the Lakota and Cheyenne as a serious threat, and Fred had dutifully ignored any scouting reports that contradicted his belief. There will be inquiries, he thinks. A wave of fear washes over him.
“There must be some survivors, some prisoners. What about Custer?”
“Sir, most of the bodies are mutilated beyond recognition. They say General Custer himself was found naked, a bullet through his head and an arrow …” His voice trails off.
Fred feels nauseous. He leans on the bed with one arm to steady himself. “And what?”
“They found an arrow piercing his penis, sir,” the orderly says in a whisper.
The news sends Fred reeling. He collapses face down on the bed, coughing and physically sick. When he finally pulls himself off the bed, he crawls to the door and locks it, ignoring all pleas from outside for two days. He allows an orderly inside the darkened room only to replenish his ice and whisky and to clip his cigars.
As he reads the newspapers pushed under the door, he realizes he is now the only man in Custer’s entire division to survive Little Big Horn. Being drawn back to Washington for his daughter’s birth saved his life.
Blissfully unaware of her entanglement in the violent affairs of men, baby Julia sleeps calmly amid the hush of the White House nursery. The Indian wars and her father’s torments churn unseen around her cradle. Her slightest murmur and cry summons hands and caresses, a chorus to comfort her. Around the clock, nannies and nurses stand sentinel, while servants and attendants fulfill her mother’s slightest desire. Her infancy unfolds within opulent arms, a pampering shared only with the children of nobles and monarchs.
Though based on a true story and real characters, this is a work of fiction.
This is my first completed novel, although I have been an obsessive student of American and Russian history for many years and I have been writing for over a decade. As a graduate student, I was a part-time journalist and published a non-fiction book. I reside in Northern California.