The rain drove against the windows. Stepan's voice went on, flat and steady. Anna made her own voice match it.
"He says he was in the middle of the river with the captain's horse when the ice broke under him. He went into the water. It was so cold that he could not shout. He says his coat filled and pulled him down, and he held onto the edge of the ice with his fingers, and the edge kept breaking. Everyone on the bank was shouting that nobody should go out because the ice was going. He says the captain did not listen. He says the captain lay down flat on the ice, crawled out to him on his belly, got him by the collar, and pulled. He says the captain pulled him out."
Stepan stopped. His eyes had not moved from the point above the Duke's head, but his hands at his sides had begun to shake.
"He says the ice broke again," Anna said, very low. "Under the captain. When Stepan was out and on the solid ice, it broke where the captain was lying, and the captain went in. The men on the bank threw a rope. They got him out quickly, but it was the hardest frost of the winter, and there was no fire to be had for hours, and the captain's clothes froze on him before they could get them off.
"Stepan carried him on his back to a peasant's house far down the river. The captain lived for three days. The fever went into his lungs. Stepan sat with him the whole time. He says the officers wrote 'fever' in their letter because it was true and because it was simpler, but it was not the fever that killed the captain. It was Stepan."
She had to stop then. She pressed her lips together and breathed, and went on.
"He says, 'The captain gave his life for mine. That is the truth. That is the thing I have carried across all that land and all that sea to put into your hands. I am the reason your brother is dead. I have come so that you would know it from my own mouth and not from paper. You may do with me what you think right.'"
The fire cracked. Nobody moved. The Duke stood very straight beside the mantelpiece, and his face was white, and he made no answer.
Then Stepan spoke again, and his voice was different: it was lower, uncertain, and it was not in Russian.
Anna did not understand at first; she thought he had fallen into some country dialect she did not know. Then she heard it, and the hair rose on her arms.