The Coronation (15 page)

Mademoiselle had returned looking so tired and miserable that it pained me to look at her. And it was partly because of this that I began the conversation about the subject of my concern – in a desire to distract her from her thoughts about the little grand duke. In order to calm her a little, I told her the direction that things had taken and mentioned the responsible mission that had fallen to my lot – naturally without any undue inflation of my own role in matters.

I had expected Mademoiselle to be delighted by the news that now there was a glimmer of hope, but after hearing me out she looked at me with a strange, frightened expression and suddenly said: ‘But that is very dangerous.’ And turning her eyes away, she added: ‘I know you are brave . . . but don’t be too brave, all right?’

I was quite nonplussed by that, and there was a rather uncomfortable pause.

‘Ah, what bad luck,’ I eventually said to recover the situation. ‘It has started raining again. And the combined choir serenade for Their Imperial Majesties is set for this evening. The rain could spoil everything.’

‘You’d better think of yourself. You have to ride in an open carriage,’ Mademoiselle said in a quiet voice, pronouncing the final phrase almost perfectly. ‘It’s very easy to catch cold.’

When I drove out through the gate in the gig with the top back, the rain was already lashing down in earnest and I was soaked through before I even reached Kaluga Square. That was bad enough, but in the stream of carriages rolling along Korovii Val Street, I was the only person behaving in this intrepid manner, whichmust have appeared strange to any onlookers. Whywould a respectable-looking man with a large moustache and whiskers not wish to put up the leather hood on his carriage? The water was streaming off the sides of my bowler hat, and my face was inundated too, while my fine tweed suit clung to me like a wet sack. But how else would Doctor Lind’s people have been able to recognise me?

Standing at my feetwas a heavy suitcase stuffed full of twenty-five-rouble notes. Colonel Karnovich’s agents were driving in front of me and behind me, maintaining a cautious distance. I was in a strangely calm state of mind and did not feel any fear or excitement – my nerves had probably been numbed by the long wait and the damp.

I did not dare to look round, for my instructions had strictly forbidden it, but I did glance to the sides every now and then, examining the occasional pedestrian passers-by. Half an hour before I left, Foma Anikeevich had telephoned me and said: ‘Mr Lasovsky has decided to take measures of his own. I heard him reporting to His Highness. He has positioned his sleuths from Kaluga Square all the way down to the Moscow River, spaced fifty paces apart, and told them to stay alert and arrest anyone who comes close to your carriage. I am afraid this might put Mikhail Georgievich in danger.’

I had no difficulty in spotting the sleuths – who, apart from them, would be out strolling with such an air of boredom in a downpour like this? Except for these gentlemen with identical black umbrellas there was almost no one on the pavements. There were just carriages driving in both directions, crowded close together, almostwheel-to-wheel. After Zatsepsky Val Street (I read the name on the street sign) a priest came up beside me in an old rattletrap of a carriage with its tarpaulin cover up. He was in a ferocious mood, in a hurry to get somewhere, and he kept shouting at the driver in front: ‘Come on, get a move on, servant of God!’ But how can anyone get a move on when he’s stuck behind a solid line of carriages, wagons, charabancs and omnibuses?

We crossed a little river or canal, then a river that was a bit wider. The chain of sleuths had ended long ago, and still no one had hailed me. I was already quite convinced that Lind had spotted the police agents and decided to call the meeting off. The flow of traffic halted at a wide crossroads, with a constable in a long oilskin raincoat whistling frantically as he gave right of way to traffic from the street crossing ours. The newspaper boys took advantage of the hold-up and darted in between the carriages, screeching: ‘
One-Kopeck News
!’, ‘
Moscow Gazette
!’, ‘
RussianWord
!’

One of them, with a flaxen forelock stuck to his forehead and a plush shirt turned dark by the rain hanging outside his trousers, suddenly grabbed hold of my carriage shaft with one hand and adroitly plumped himself down beside me on the seat. He was so small and so nimble that probably no one in the carriages behind had noticed him through the curtain of rain.

‘Turn right, Mister,’ the little lad said, nudging me in the side with his elbow. ‘And orders are not to turn your head.’

I wanted very much to look back to see if the police agents had missed this unexpected messenger, but I did not dare. They would see me take the turn anyway.

I pulled the reins to the right, cracked the whip, and the horse turned into a slanting side street that looked most respectable, with fine stone houses.

‘Move on, Mister, move on!’ the boy cried, looking back. ‘Come on now!’

He grabbed the whip from me, gave a wild whistle, lashed the chestnut horse, and it started clopping its hooves over the cobblestones for all it was worth.

‘Turn in there!’ said my guide, jabbing one finger to the left.

We went flying into a street that was a bit smaller and less grand, hurtled past one block of buildings and took another turn. Then another, and another.

‘Go that way, into the gateway,’ the newspaper boy ordered.

I pulled back slightly on the reins, and we drove into a dark narrow archway.

Less than half a minute later two carriages carrying police agents went rumbling and clattering past, and then all was quiet except for the splashing of the rain as it lashed even harder against the surface of the road.

‘And what now?’ I asked, taking a cautious look at the messenger.

‘Wait,’ he said grandly, blowing on his chilly hands.

It was clear that I could not expect any help from the court police and I would have to fend for myself. But I was not afraid, for I could deal with an opponent like this on my own. A small boywas no problem. Grab him by his skinny shoulders, give him a good shaking and he would tell me who had sent him. Then I could follow the trail.

Then I took a better look at the little fellow, noting the swollen mouth not at all like a child’s and the screwed-up eyes. A wild wolf cub, a real wolf cub. One could never shake the truth out of a boy like that.

Suddenly I heard the sound of another carriage approaching in the distance. I craned my neck to look, and the boy immediately took his chance. I heard a rustling sound and when I looked back I saw there was no longer anyone beside me – there was nothing but a blurred smear on the wet seat.

The rumbling was very close now. I jumped down off the coach box, ran out of the archway to the pavement and saw a foursome of sturdy blacks pulling a carriage with all the curtains tightly closed at a spanking pace. The driver had a hood lowered over his face and he was cracking a long whip loudly over the gleaming backs of the horses. When the carriage drew abreast of the archway, the curtains suddenly parted and there in front of me I saw His Highness’s pale little face framed in golden curls and that familiar sailor’s hat with the red pompom.

Mikhail Georgievich also saw me and started shouting loudly: ‘Afon! Afon!’

That was what he had always called me.

I tried to shout too and I opened my mouth, but only sobbed.

Lord, what was I to do?

The tricky procedure of backing the gig out of the gateway would take me too long. Not even realising what I was doing in my agitation, I dashed after the carriage as fast as I could run. I did not even notice when the wet bowler hat went flying off my head.

‘Stop!’ I shouted. ‘Stop!’

I could see the driver’s round hat above the roof of the carriage, and his flailing whip.

I had never run like that before in all my life, not even during my time as a court outrunner.

Of course, there was no way I could have caught a team of four horses if the street had not suddenly taken a tight bend. The carriage slowed down, heeling over slightly to one side. I took several huge bounds to reduce the distance, jumped and clung onto the luggage rack with both hands. I pulled myself up and was just on the point of climbing onto the monkey board, but the driver, without even looking round, lashed his whip back over the roof, stinging my temple, and I fell off. I landed face down in a puddle and then rolled across it, sending up a fountain of spray. When I lifted myself up on my hands the carriage was already turning a corner.

I limped back to the gig, wiping my dirty face with my sleeve, but when I got there the suitcase of money was gone.

9 May

The ceremonial procession had already passed the Triumphal Gates when I jumped out of my hired carriage, panting hard and streaming with sweat, and started working away brusquely with my elbows to force my way through the dense crowd lining both sides of Bolshaya Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street.

There were cordons of troops along the edge of the roadway and I squeezed my way through as close as possible to an officer, attempting as I went to extract from my pocket the decorative cardboard ticket that gave me the right to take part in the procession. But that proved to be far from simple, for in the crush it was not possible for me to straighten out my elbows. I realised that I would have to wait until the sovereign passed by and then slip through into the tail of the column.

There was a festive, radiant sun in the sky – for the first time after so many overcast days. The air was filled with the pealing of bells and shouts of ‘Hoorah!’

The emperor was making his ceremonial entry into the old capital, following the route from the suburban Petrovsky Palace to the Kremlin.

There were twelve horse gendarmes riding huge stallions at the front of the procession, and a mocking voice behind my back said rather loudly: ‘
C’est symbolique, n’est-ce pas
?
¹
It’s easy enough to see who’s in charge in Russia.’

I looked round and saw two students gazing in disgust at the parade through the spectacles on their smug faces.

Behind the gendarmes came the Cossacks of the the imperial escort, swaying in their saddles, with the silver embroidery of their crimson Circassian coats glittering in the sun.

‘And they’ve got their whips too,’ the same voice remarked.

Then the Don Cossacks rode past in a rather untidy square, followed by a deputation from the Asiatic subjects of the empire, dressed in their colourful costumes, riding without any formation whatever, with carpets for saddles on their slimlegged, prancing steeds. I recognised the Emir of Bukhara and the Khan of Khiva, both wearing medals and gold general’s epaulettes, which looked strange on their Central Asian robes.

I still had a long time to wait. A long procession of representatives of the nobility passed by in their full-dress uniforms, and behind them came Head of the Bedchamber Bulkin, who was leading the court servants: footmen, blackamoors in turbans, Cossacks of the bedchamber. Then at last the people on the balconies decorated with flags and garlands began cheering, waving their hands and scarves, and the spectators pressed forward, stretching the cables taut, and I guessed that the central core of the column was approaching.

His Majesty was riding alone, looking most impressive in his Semyonovsky regimental uniform. His graceful snow-white mare Norma twitched her slim ears sensitively and squinted to one side and the other with her moist black eyes, but her ceremonial stride never faltered. The tsar’s face was motionless, frozen in a fixed smile. His white-gloved right hand was suspended beside his temple in a martial salute while his left hand toyed gently with the gilded bridle.

I waited for the grand dukes to pass by, and also the open landaus with Their Majesties the dowager and reigning empresses, and then showed my pass to the cordon and ran hastily across the open space.

Finding myself in the column of senators walking on foot, I made my way into the very centre, as far away as possible from the public gaze, and then started zigzagging my way forward, muttering my apologies as I slipped through. The important gentlemen, many of whom I knew by sight, glanced in bewilderment at this ignorant fellow in the green livery of the house of the Georgieviches, but I had no time to be concerned about the proprieties. The letter from Doctor Lind was burning my chest.

I caught a glimpse of Colonel Karnovich sitting on the monkey board of the empress-mother’s carriage. He was dressed as a footman of the chamber, with a tunic and a powdered wig, but was still wearing his eternal blue-tinted spectacles. At that moment however the head of the tsar’s bodyguard could not be of any help to me. I needed urgently to talk with Georgii Alexandrovich, although even he would not be able to resolve the problem that had arisen. The tsar himself was required for that. And, even worse, the tsarina.

Following the previous day’s embarrassing failure, Colonel Karnovich had received a vociferous dressing-down from Georgii Alexandrovich for preparing his agents poorly. I got my share too, from both of them, for not getting a good look at anything and not even detaining the newspaper boy. Fandorin was not present at this distressing scene. As Somov later informed me, the state counsellor and his Japanese had gone off somewhere even before I left for the meeting with Doctor Lind’s people, and they had not been seen since.