Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (3 page)

The film of dust, thicker than the smoke from a cigarette, less dense than a cloud, rose some twenty feet above the road and a long way out on either side. The roads were dusty
in the summer of 1903 and not designed to carry so many pilgrims. These travellers had come from all over Russia, mystics from Siberia, Holy Fools from the Crimea, mountain people from the
Caucasus, peasants in their rough clothes from the very heart of Russia. The sick had come as well as the healthy, amputees brandishing their crutches as they limped along, desperate mothers
holding pale and diseased children in their arms, or pushing them in home-made handcarts, children who looked as if they might never reach their destination. The pilgrims carried icons of St
Serafim or the Virgin, many of them muttering prayers to themselves or their paintings every step of the way. Some carried baskets of food, others had resolved to fast until they saw the relics of
the saint installed in glory in the new cathedral. The mad and deranged had come, sometimes shrieking out their private visions at the side of the road, sometimes screaming in pain as the Cossack
horsemen or the police beat them into silence. And at the heart of this progression of pilgrims, travelling in their imperial troikas, Nicholas and Alexandra, Emperor and Empress of All the
Russias, were bent on the same journey of pilgrimage to the same destination as their subjects. Word of their journey had spread through the villages they passed. Crowds would come out to stare and
shout oaths of loyalty to their Emperor, never before seen in these remote parts and never seen since.

Sarov was the goal, Sarov, home to one of the most famous holy men in Russia whose remains were to be removed from his grave in the convent cemetery and transferred to a new cathedral that was
to be consecrated in his name. Serafim was the name of the holy man. He had already been declared a saint on the orders of the Tsar. Everyone, even the babies in the handcarts, knew the story of St
Serafim. Many of the pilgrims had shouted out the best known of his prayers to encourage themselves on the road. He had gone as a monk to live alone in a cottage in the forest to be close to nature
and closer to his God. For many years he lived the simple life there, alone with his prayers and his Creator. Then three robbers came to his hut one day and demanded money. When Serafim told them
he had no money, they beat him senseless and left him for dead. Serafim returned to the monastery near Sarov and refused to let the robbers be punished. Now began his late career as mystic and
healer. People believed he could make the blind see and the deaf hear and cure any number of ailments that oppressed the peasants. The numbers of the sick he had cured ran into thousands. That was
why the people of Russia marched in such numbers to the consecration of his cathedral.

All of the pilgrims had their own special reason for their journey: a child to be healed, a parent brought back to health, a husband or wife restored to sight or to sanity. But one woman had a
very special cause very close to her heart. In spite of the humiliation of her false pregnancy, in spite of the fact that the Foreign Service had reported that Philippe Vachot was a butcher from
Lyons who had been arrested for fraud in France, the Empress Alexandra still believed in him. She persuaded Nicholas to have the offending civil servant who had imparted the news of Vachot’s
disgrace in his native land stripped of his position and sent to Siberia. She still believed. The candles and the incense still burned in the Montenegrins’ apartment, the icons still
shimmered on the walls as the mystic work went on. In some ways Alexandra was a practical woman. She bought most of the furniture for her palace from that Mecca of the English middle class, Maples
department store in London’s Tottenham Court Road. But she seemed to need spiritualism the way other people in St Petersburg needed love affairs or yachts or fine horses. And she carried two
messages from Philippe along the dusty roads to Sarov. Among his many powers the saint was said to be able to cure the barren, to give the infertile children. Surely a man who could do that could
make her bring forth a son? She was to pray to the saint for a son and she was to bathe in the holy waters of the spring that bore his name. The second message was more cryptic and Alexandra was
not sure of its meaning. Philippe had told the imperial couple that he had been sent on a mission and that his mission was almost over. But after his death, he assured them, another man would take
over his spirit and his work, a greater man than he, a true holy man who would bring great glory to Russia.

The first couple of days were spent consecrating the cathedral. The Metropolitan of St Petersburg, an enormous man well over six feet six inches tall, led the prayers. Some of the pilgrims went
to the services, standing patiently while the choir and the priests worked their way through the special liturgy for the consecration of a cathedral, crossing themselves with the three-fingered
cross of the Russian Orthodox, kissing the icons. But most of them waited. They had not travelled these enormous distances for the blessing of a new church. They were waiting for the moment when
the bones of the saint would be moved in their new coffin and installed in front of the chancel. Then the proper business of the pilgrimage could begin. Meanwhile they slept in the fields. The
police reported that they were one of the best behaved crowds they had ever seen. Drunkenness, that curse of all Russian gatherings from two to twenty thousand people, had not appeared. The
pilgrims rapidly emptied the shops of Sarov of all available food and waited, uncomplaining, for fresh supplies to arrive.

Shortly after ten o’clock on the fourth day the most dramatic part of the service began. Under the great golden dome the choir and the priests sang one of the opening sections of Matins.

Outside, the Tsar, his uncle Grand Duke Serge and various members of the imperial family carried the gold coffin with the relics of St Serafim on their shoulders right round the exterior of the
cathedral. The peasants who had been leaning against the walls or making pathetic encampments with their few belongings parted before the coffin like the waters of the Red Sea. Then the coffin was
carried round the inside of the building before being placed in front of the chancel.

Slowly at first, then in a trickle, then in a steady stream, came the pilgrims. They limped, they shuffled, they came with their crutches, some of them crawled, one or two ran to kiss the coffin
of the dead saint. They knew, these faithful – had not their own priests lectured them about this before they set off on their pilgrimage? – that they were not to expect God’s
grace to make itself manifest immediately. It might be days or weeks or even years before the Holy Spirit revealed itself. There was so much hope in the building, irrational hope, unreasonable hope
that illnesses, which must of themselves be the work of God, could be halted or reversed by one of his saints. The choir sang on. The Metropolitan Antony blessed the pilgrims in the chancel.
Gradually the atmosphere became very tense, as if the entire congregation and those denied entry standing outside were all desperate for a miracle. Some of the pilgrims were praying for one. The
anthems and responses of the choir grew ever more hypnotic. Then there was a sign. A madman was brought up, his arms waving wildly, his eyes staring intently at some private reality of his own, two
friends or relations guiding him forwards. As he kissed the coffin and received the blessing of the Metropolitan, a peace seemed to descend on him. His limbs returned to normal. His eyes stopped
the staring of the deranged and looked about him intelligently. Whether it was the work of the saint or the atmosphere or a fluke did not matter to the congregation. ‘He is healed!’
‘Thank the Lord!’ ‘St Serafim be praised!’ rang round the cathedral until the Metropolitan himself had to look sternly down the nave for the noise to stop. Later on a dumb
child seemed to be cured. After four hours the pilgrims were convinced that their journey was worthwhile, that God and his saint had indeed come to Sarov to cast his blessings on his people and
work miracles on their afflictions.

Late in the evening of the last day of the ceremonies Nicholas and Alexandra and some of their party went very quietly to bathe in St Serafim’s pool. A group of Cossacks were on duty,
facing outwards, in case of assassins. Staff had brought towels and dry clothes. The cathedral was outlined faintly against a crescent moon. A pair of owls could be heard hooting in the distance.
The waters in the pool were very cold. As Alix slipped in and lowered herself until she was almost completely covered, she prayed to St Serafim. She prayed that he would take pity on a poor sinner
whose dearest wishes had been denied. She prayed that he would take heed of her husband, a good man denied the one thing he most needed, a son and heir. She prayed that St Serafim would take heed
of his own country, that he would ensure that Russia was not left to lawlessness and crime and anarchy and depravity because there was no proper heir to the throne of the Romanovs. This time,
shivering slightly now in the evening chill, she knew her prayers would be answered. She knew now that she would have a son. In the end Philippe had not failed her.

Ever since she had read
Anna Karenina
two years before, Natasha Bobrinsky thought of Tolstoy’s heroine every time she was in a railway station. This particular
engine driver seemed intent on raising so much steam that any putative suicides would have been completely invisible. She peered, fascinated, at those enormous wheels and wondered what it would be
like to be crushed to death beneath them. She shuddered slightly, for Natasha had no intention of dying just yet. The Bobrinskys had come to St Petersburg with Peter the Great and had been rewarded
for their loyalty and devotion to his new capital with grants of thousands of acres. Successive Bobrinskys, in their turn, had served their Tsars and been rewarded with yet more grants of land.
Natasha’s father had once tried to show her on a map where the family estates were, many of them thousands and thousands of miles away. In the end her parents too had moved thousands of miles
away for most of the year, not to the badlands of Siberia, but to the sunnier climes of Paris and the French Riviera. Natasha wasn’t particularly interested in her father’s estates.
Surely girls of eighteen couldn’t be expected to be interested in places that far away from civilization, which stopped, as everyone who was anyone in St Petersburg knew, at the end of the
Nevskii Prospekt.

Even Natasha’s four elder brothers, who had teased and tormented their only sister from earliest times, would have said she was pretty. She was taller than average, without being liable to
stand out in a crowd, slim, with very dark eyes and thick brown hair. For her trip to the station Natasha was clad from head to foot in fur and reminded more than one of the passengers on the
platform of Tolstoy’s eponymous heroine. She had come to see a young man off on a journey of adventure. Natasha had known Mikhail Shaporov since she was a child. Just when she thought their
friendship might turn into something different, something altogether more exciting, he had to leave Russia to go and live in the fogs of London. And where was he? she thought, looking up at the
clock and seeing that the train would leave in nine minutes’ time. If you were a Shaporov, she reflected with a smile, you probably wouldn’t mind missing a train. You could probably buy
yourself another one on the spot. For the Shaporovs had not been content with the great estates they had received on government service. They had branched out into banking and insurance and all
kinds of other things to do with money that Natasha didn’t understand. People said they were now much richer than the Romanovs.

Then she saw him, running at full speed towards her, his eyes filled with happiness.

‘Natasha!’ he panted. ‘I’m at the other end of the train! This way!’

With that he grabbed her hand and pulled her at breakneck speed down the platform, dodging a considerable amount of luggage and annoying a great many other travellers who had to get out of their
way.

‘Here we are,’ he said, still out of breath. ‘This compartment is mine.’

Natasha saw that he had a sleeping compartment and a well-furnished living room at his disposal. Shaporovs didn’t travel third class.

‘Do you think you’ll have enough room in there, Mikhail? You don’t think you should have ordered a dining suite and a chef for yourself as well?’

The young man laughed. ‘I didn’t book it, Natasha. I’d have been perfectly happy with first class. My father booked it for me.’

Natasha still remembered the first time she had met Mikhail’s father at a children’s party. He had given rides on his back to every single small guest, some of them up the marble
staircase accompanied by wolf noises. Now the man was booking luxury train suites for his children.

‘You’ve been to London a lot, haven’t you?’ asked Natasha, anxious perhaps lest her young man, or one who might become her young man, be going to an alien world.

‘I have been there a lot. They sent me to school there, you may remember, for two years before I went to Oxford. London’s splendid. It’s not as beautiful as St Petersburg and
the English are more reserved than we are, but it’s a fine city. And,’ he went on, noticing that Natasha was looking sad all of a sudden, ‘my father says I can come home after
three months if I do well.’