Russian series 03 - The Eagle's Fate (22 page)

He stood aside and gestured towards the door. Schevich walked past him, then hesitated in the doorway.

‘I see I was mistaken,’ he said stiffly. ‘My apologies, Countess.’

He made a formal little bow to Irina, nodded curtly to Nadya, then left the room. Andrei shut the door behind him and turned to Irina, who was biting her lips and fiddling with the handle of her pretty beaded reticule.

‘Thank you,’ she said in a small, subdued voice, then, after a slight pause, ‘I—I wish I could go home.’

‘Of course you can,’ Andrei replied. ‘If you’ll wait here for a few minutes, I’ll go and arrange it—make our excuses to Princess Dengovskaya and call the carriage.’

He turned towards the door, but Irina checked him by saying, ‘Oh—I—I don’t want to spoil your evening…’

‘My dear girl! There’ll be plenty of other balls as grand as this! Neither of us will break our hearts at missing the last hour or so of this one, shall we, Nadya?’

‘Of course not,’ Nadya replied promptly, any disappointment she might have felt swamped by the pleasure of hearing him address her as ‘Nadya’ in such an easy, friendly fashion.

Irina indulged in a few tears while he was gone, but blew her nose resolutely and gave Andrei a watery smile when he returned. He smiled back and said, ‘I’ve told the Princess that you have the headache rather badly, and she has promised to tell Tatya when the opportunity arises, but she’s just stood up for a polonaise and it’s likely to go on for some time. The carriage is just coming round from the stableyard, so shall we go down? Oh—I’ve brought your shawls—I hope they’re the right ones.’

‘Must we go through the supper-room?’ Irina asked, shrinking back. ‘All those people…’

‘No. Down the backstairs.’

Andrei took her arm and led her to the far end of the corridor, Nadya following, down the small staircase, through a vestibule, and out into a cobbled yard, where Tatya’s carriage was waiting. They wrapped their shawls about their shoulders and ran the few steps from door to carriage, the sudden bitter cold taking their breath away after the warmth of the building, and in no time they were gliding smoothly along the carriage-way beside the frozen Fontanka river, Andrei telling them who owned each of the great houses they passed.

As they turned into the Nevsky Prospect and cross the Anichkov Bridge, he pointed out the part of the nearby palace which contained the Emperor’s Cabinet, and explained how the bridge and the palace took their name from the Army officer who supervised the building of the first bridge there, which occupied the time until they turned left into Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, and then he embarked on an anecdote about the Summer Garden at the other end of the long street until they were almost home.

The footman who opened the door to them looked a little startled to see them home so early, and without his mistress, but Andrei calmly said ‘Countess Barova feels a little unwell—so hot in the ballroom! Some tea in the garden-room, if you please’, at which the footman bowed and summoned someone a little lower down the hierarchy to see to it.

Irina’s spirits revived considerably before she had sipped more than half her tea, and she thanked Andrei very much for rescuing her.

‘Did—did you hear what he said?’ she asked.

‘Quite a lot of it. I tried listening at the keyhole, but it was easier when I opened the door a fraction. I wasn’t sure what he was up to,’ Andrei replied, as if there was nothing very unusual about it all.

‘Was it true?’

Andrei hesitated, and Irina said firmly, ‘I’d rather know, or I shall worry about it.’

‘I gather that he told you that Lev is in love with Princess Volkhova. Well, there was a grain of truth in it, but no more.’ He stopped for a moment, thinking, and then went on,’ Anna Volkhova is not a normal woman, you see. She has an insatiable appetite for—for men. I don’t know whether it developed after her marriage, or if she merely kept it in check until then, but within three months of the wedding, she started taking lovers, without any particular discrimination or discretion, and had gone on so ever since. She’s beautiful, of course, and she seems to mesmerize her victims—even those who are quite happily married—then she uses them, and casts them off when she’s tired of them, like bonnets or gowns.!

‘The better sort of men are usually sickened by her demands before then, and break away themselves, but some poor fools go on hanging about her long after she’s abandoned them for someone new and, temporarily, more interesting. Lev was one of the former variety. About two years ago he was caught in her web for about a week, absolutely besotted, and then he spent the whole afternoon sitting in a corner in a church, got himself thoroughly drunk that night, and never went near her again. That’s all. No worse and a great deal better than most men, and I mean most of the men in Petersburg Society!’

‘Did you…?’ Irina asked, wide-eyed, then blushed, realising that it was none of her business.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘but I was armoured by something I knew before I met her. Lev’s very ashamed of the affair, by the way, because he has a great liking and respect for the woman’s husband.’

Nadya had noted the derogatory ‘woman’ instead of ‘lady’ and wondered what had made Andrei invulnerable to her beauty, for she was certainly quite extraordinarily attractive. She was impressed by the calm, frank way in which he had spoken of things not normally discussed in mixed company.

‘I shan’t say anything to Lev about it,’ Irina said. ‘Except to let him know that I know. He’d be very angry with Monsieur Schevich.’ Then, in sudden anxiety, ‘He—Monsieur Schevich, that is—he won’t make any trouble, will he?’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Andrei.

‘He won’t challenge you, or anything?’

Andrei laughed and shook his head. ‘Not possibly, and if he did, I’d have to refuse. The fellow’s only a merchant, with no rank—I couldn’t meet him if I wanted to, which I don’t!’

Nadya had been silent through all this, listening and watching their faces, thinking herself unnoticed, but suddenly Andrei turned to her and remarked, ‘You’re very quiet. Is anything wrong?’

‘No, thank you,’ she replied, the, thoughtfully, ‘She can’t be a happy person, I think, hurting so many people, and always searching for something she can’t find.’

‘Your name should have been Charity instead of Hope!’ Andrei exclaimed, ‘Save your pity for someone more deserving, my dear!’ And he smiled at Nadya in a particularly friendly way which quite surprised her, but the casual endearment gave her a painful little jolt.

Tatya returned a few minutes late, full of concern, and reproved Andrei for not seeking her out at the ball to tell her Irina was unwell.

‘I didn’t wish to draw attention to the matter,’ he replied. ‘It’s more complicated than you think.’ And he gave her a brief resume of the evening’s events.

‘Well! The two-faced little toad!’ Tatya exclaimed indignantly. ‘He knows perfectly well that there’s no truth worth mentioning in that tale! Lev had a few days of minor insanity, and hasn’t so much as looked at the woman since!’ She sounded as if her brother had contracted some minor illness for a brief period.

‘There was something else that Andrei hasn’t mentioned,’ Irina said quietly, looking at each of them in turn. ‘he seemed to think that—that there must have been a particular reason for Lev offering to marry me.’

Tatya looked slightly blank for a moment, then said calmly ‘Oh, that he’d made you
enceinte
, you mean? That just shows that the fellow’s no gentleman, or he wouldn’t have thought it, let alone mentioned it!’

‘That’s coming it a bit strong, Tatya!’ Andrei protested. ‘Lev’s not all that saintly! I dare say it occurred to most people, but it is obviously not true, so everyone will have realised by now that he’s marrying her for a much duller reason—the poor fellow must have fallen in love with her!’

All three ladies could not help laughing at his idea of a ‘much duller reason’, and so they retired on a happier not, Nadya managing to stay awake long enough to savour the thought that Andrei had said several pleasant things to her during the evening, so perhaps he was beginning to realise that not all Serovs were villains.

After two very late night, they were all too tired the next day to do anything very much. Princess Dengovskaya sent some flowers and an enquiry after Irina’s health, to which she replied with a note of thanks and apology, and they all occupied themselves quietly at home, apart from an exhilarating sledge-drive during the afternoon. By the following day they had recovered enough to welcome an invitation to spend the afternoon at an entertainment devised by one of Tatya’s beaux.

He had a fine mansion in Millionaire’s Row, overlooking the Palace Quay and the River Neva, and had somehow obtained permission to have an ice-mountain built on the frozen river before his house, and he was inviting his friends to a grand tobogganing party to try it out.

Even Andrei seemed attracted by the idea, although he said he had no intention of going on the mountain, but would skate a little and watch the others. So the ladies wrapped up warmly in thick, fur-lined redingotes with hoods and padded boots, and set off after luncheon to where the mountain rose up from the ice, a little upstream from the Winter Palace. They found an excited group there, the men dressed in Tartar or Cossack caps, fur short coats and wide trousers tucked into knee-high boots, and for once outshining the ladies in the colourful embroidery on their garments.

The mountain was a tower of wooden scaffolding about fifty feet high, with steps ascending on one side, and a long slide of boards covered packed snow on the other, polished to form a perfectly smooth surface extending at a fairly steep angle for about eighty feet along the ice of the river.

The tower was decorated with flags and little trees, and the whole area railed off, with a couple of policemen standing by to order away any peasant who came too close, for many of the people using the river as a roadway or skating-rink had stopped to watch the fun, clutching their baskets or bundles. A pieman was among them, selling hot
piroshki
and doing a brisk trade.

‘It’s too steep, I think,’ Andrei observed, looking at the slide, but their host replied, ‘No, no! My people have been down it a couple of dozen times with no trouble. Come, Tatya Petrovna! You shall start the proceedings with me!’

Tatya went with him up the steps to the top of the tower, where there were half a dozen little toboggans ready. Nadya and Irina followed with the other guests, and watched as their host sat on one of the little sledges, with Tatya in front of him, held securely between his knees. There was a brief pause while the servant in charge of the sledges made sure that no scarf or part of garment was loose or hanging over the edge, and then he pushed the sledge off, and it rushed down the slide at a tremendous rate, shooting on for quite a distance along the frozen river with the spectators cheering it on.

Nadya looked at Andrei, who was standing near the end of the slide, but well back out of the way, watching, with his skates hanging from one wrist. She was just wondering if he wanted some help to put them on, when she was seized by one of the gentlemen, who exclaimed, ‘You next!’, and lifted her bodily on to the next sledge, fitting himself in behind her and crying ‘Hurry, hurry!’ to the attendant.

The next moment they were hurtling down the slide, the wind of their progress freezing Nadya’s face and making her eyes smart. It was wildly exhilarating, and when her partner suddenly shouted in her ear as they were about half-way down, she did not realise that it was through anything but excitement until suddenly the whole scene before her gave a tremendous lurch sideways. She was flung headlong from the toboggan as it tipped over the side of the slide and flew through the air, the ice of the river coming up to meet her, until she struck it with a crash and everything went black.

Chapter Nine