The Coronation (35 page)

16 May

I sat by the river gazing dully at the long rafts of rough brown logs floating past, trying to understand whether it was I who had gone insane or the world around me.

Afanasii Ziukin declared an outlaw? Being hunted by the police and gendarmes?

Then perhaps Afanasii Ziukin was not really me at all but someone else.

But no, the entire might of the of the empire’s forces of law and order had been mobilised precisely to find us – Mr Fandorin and myself. And the reason for that was not some monstrous misunderstanding but our own criminal behaviour. Yes indeed,
our
behaviour, because I had become Fandorin’s accomplice willingly.

I needed to assess everything clearly from the very beginning, to recall every last detail of the events of the previous night.

When we finally managed to break open the lock and enter the passage, any attempt to overtake Lind was already pointless. But in our extreme agitation we did not realise this immediately. Fandorin ran ahead, lighting the way with a lantern he had taken from a table, and I ran after him, hunching over in order not to bang my head against the low ceiling. The swaying beam of light picked tangles of cobwebs out of the darkness, exposed shards of some kind under our feet, lit up the clay walls with a damp gleam.

After about twenty paces the passage divided in two. Erast Petrovich squatted on the ground for a moment, shone his lantern down and confidently turned to the right. Thirty seconds later the tunnel divided again. After studying the tracks clearly visible in the thick layer of dust, we went to the left. Another seven or eight forks were negotiated with the same ease, and then the oil in the lantern ran out, and we were left in total darkness.

‘Wonderful,’ Fandorin muttered angrily. ‘Absolutely wonderful. Now not only can’t we pursue Lind, we can’t even find the way back either. Who would ever have believed there was such a maze down here? They must have been digging it for three hundred years, if not longer: the monks during the Time of Troubles and the rebel Streltsy, and the Old Believers hiding their ancient books and church silver from the Patriarch Nikon; and since there are stone galleries, theremust have been quarries here at some time . . . All right, Ziukin. Let’s go wherever our path leads.’

Making our way in total darkness was slow and difficult. I fell several times when I stumbled over obstacles on the floor. The first time I fell some live creature darted out from under me with a squeal and I grabbed at my heart. I have one shameful and unmanly weakness – I cannot stand rats and mice. I am instinctively repulsed by those creeping, darting, thieving vermin. On the next occasion I caught my foot on something shaped like a root, and when I felt it with my hand, it proved to be a human ribcage. When I stretched my length on the ground for the third time, I heard something jingle underneath me. I clutched at my pocket – and the Orlov was not there.

I shouted out in horror: ‘I’ve dropped the stone.’

Fandorin struck a match, and I saw a broken crock containing irregular round objects that glinted dully in the light. I picked one up – it was a silver coin, very old. But I had no interest at all in coins just then. I wondered if I could possibly have dropped the diamond earlier, during one of my other falls. In that case finding it would be very far from easy.

Thank God, with his third match Fandorin spotted the diamond, half-buried in the dust, and he kept it. After what had happened, I did not dare to object. I tipped two handfuls of coins from the treasure trove into my pockets and we wandered on.

I do not know how many hours it lasted. Sometimes we sat down on the ground to draw breath. This was the second night in succession I had spent underground and, Lord help me, I would be hard pressed to say which of them I liked less.

We could not even look to see what time it was, because our matches were soon soaked by the damp air and refused to strike. When I stumbled over those familiar bones for the second time, it became clear that we were wandering in circles.

Then Fandorin said: ‘You know, Ziukin, this will not do. Do you want rats to run over your naked ribs?’

I shuddered.

‘Well, nor do I. Sowemust stop simply strolling about, hoping for things to work out somehow or other. We need a system. From nowonwe followa strict alternation: one turn to the right, one turn to the left. Forward!’

But even after the introduction of the ‘system’ we walked for a very long time, until eventually we saw a feeble light glimmering in the distance. I was the first to go dashing towards it. The passage narrowed and shrank until we had to crawl on all fours, but that was all right, because the light kept growing brighter and brighter. At the very end I grabbed hold of a cold, rough root, and it suddenly tore itself out of my hand with an angry hiss. A snake! I gasped and jerked away, banging the back of my head against the stone ceiling. I saw yellow spots on the narrow head of the black band as it rippled away from me – a harmless grass snake – but my heart was still pounding insanely.

The burrow had led us out to the edge of the water on a riverbank. I saw a dark barge wreathed in morning mist, the roofs of warehouses on the far side of the river and the semicircular arches of a railway bridge in the distance.

‘We haven’t really travelled very far,’ said Fandorin, straightening up and dusting off his soiled coachman’s coat. I saw that he had already rid himself of the long black beard and I thought he had left the hat with the broad brim back in the vault. I followed the direction of his glance. Just a few hundred paces away the domes of the Novodevichy Convent were glinting gently in the first rays of sunlight.

‘Evidently the nuns used this passage as a secret way to reach the river,’ Fandorin surmised. ‘I wonder what for.’

I could not have cared less.

‘And there’s the bell tower,’ I said, pointing. ‘Quickly, let’s go. Mr Karnovich and Mr Lasovsky must be tired of looking for us. Or if not for us, for the Orlov. Won’t they be delighted!’

I smiled. At that moment the sense of open space, the light and the freshness of the morning filled me with the same feeling of life’s completeness that Lazarus must have felt when he rose from the dead.

‘Do you really want to give the Orlov back to Karnovich?’ Fandorin asked incredulously.

For a moment I thought I must have misheard, but then I realised that, like myself, Mr Fandorin was delighted by the successful outcome of our appalling night and was therefore in the mood for a joke. Well, there are circumstances in which even Ziukin is not averse to a joke, even if his companion is not the most pleasant.

‘No, I want to take the stone to Doctor Lind,’ I replied with a restrained smile intended to indicate that I had appreciated his joke and was replying in kind.

‘Well, that is just it,’ Erast Petrovich said, nodding seriously. ‘You understand that if we give the stone to the authorities, we shall never see it again. And then the boy and Emilie are doomed.’

Now I realised that he was not joking at all.

‘Do you really intend to enter into an independent bargain with Doctor Lind?’ I asked, just to make certain.

‘Yes. What else can we do?’

Neither of us spoke as we stared at each other in mutual perplexity. My mood of exaltation vanished without a trace. A terrible presentiment turned my mouth dry.

Fandorin looked me over from head to foot, as if seeing me for the first time and asked in a curious tone of voice: ‘Just a m-moment, Ziukin, don’t you love little Mika?’

‘Very much,’ I said, surprised at such a question.

‘And then . . . you are rather partial to Emilie, I believe?’

I was feeling very tired; we were both smeared with dust and clay; the air smelled of grass and the river; and all of this gave me the feeling that the ordinary conventions did not apply. That was the only reason why I answered this outrageously immodest question: ‘I am not indifferent to Mademoiselle Declique’s fate.’

‘So, the stake in this game is the lives of t-two people. People whom you . . . well, let us say, to whose fate you are “not indifferent”. And you are prepared to sacrifice those people for a piece of polished carbon?’

‘There are things that are more important than love,’ I said in a quiet voice and suddenly remembered that Fandorin had said the same thing to Xenia Georgievna quite recently.

I found this memory disturbing and felt it necessary to clarify my meaning: ‘For example, honour. Fidelity. The prestige of the monarchy. National holy relics.’

I felt rather foolish explaining such things, but what else was there for me to do?

Fandorin paused before he spoke: ‘You, Ziukin, have a choice. Do you see the police cordon around the chapel? Either you go across to it and tell them that Fandorin has absconded, t-taking the Orlov with him, or we try to save Emilie and the child together. Decide.’

So saying he took the black beard and shaggy wig out of his pocket – apparently he had kept them after all – and put on this hirsute disguise, transforming himself into a simple shaggy peasant of the kind who move into the large cities in search of work.

I do not know why I stayed with him. Upon my word of honour, I do not know. I did not say a word, but I did not move from the spot.

‘Well, are we off to hard labour in the same fetters?’ Fandorin asked with quite inappropriate merriment, holding out his hand.

His handshake was firm, mine was feeble.

‘Sit here for a while and don’t make yourself obvious. I’ll go and reconnoitre.’

He strode off in the direction of the convent and I knelt down beside the water. It was pure and transparent. I first drank my fill and then, when the ripples had dispersed, I contemplated the reflection of my face. Nothing in it seemed to have changed: a moustache, sideburns, a prominent forehead with a receding hairline. And yet it was not the face of Housemaster Ziukin, butler of the Green House and faithful servant of the throne, but that of a state criminal.

Erast Petrovich’s return roused me from my melancholy torpor but did nothing to improve my mood.

Apparently the police and soldiers had cordoned off not only the chapel but the entire convent. The search had already been going on for many hours in the underground labyrinth. The police constable with whom Fandorin spoke told him that all the police stations had been sent verbal portraits of two highly dangerous criminals who had committed some unknown crime that must be truly heinous. All routes out of Moscow were completely sealed off and it was only a matter of time before the two villains were caught. One of them was a lean youthful-looking man with dark hair and a slim moustache, special features, grey hair at the temples and a characteristic stammer. The other – and here Fandorin described my own modest person but in far greater detail. And so I learned that my nose was of the divided cartilage type, my wart was not merely on my neck but in its third left segment, and my eyes were of a marshy yellow hue with an almond-shaped outline.

‘How did you manage to get the constable to talk?’ I asked in amazement. ‘And did he not find your stammer suspicious?’

‘Getting a stranger to talk requires knowledge of psychology and physiognomical analysis,’ Erast Petrovich explained with a haughty air. ‘And as for the stammer, as you may have observed, when I assume a different identity, I change my voice and my way of speaking and all the other characteristics of speech. It is no longer me, or at least not entirely me. The stammer is the result of a concussion suffered very long ago by Fandorin, not by the grave little peasant who spoke so respectfully to the police constable.’

I gestured impatiently.

‘All your psychology is worth nothing in the present circumstances. We cannot save anyone. We need someone to save us. The police have our descriptions. We ought to give ourselves up. If we explain what happened, they will forgive us.’

Fandorin shrugged with outrageous flippancy. ‘Never mind those descriptions. We shall change our appearance. Dye your hair blond, dress you up as a civil servant, shave off your moustache and sideburns—’

‘Not for anything in the world!’ I exclaimed. ‘I have had them for more than twenty years!’

‘As you wish, but with your
favoris de chien
, as Lind puts it, you really are easy to identify. You are condemning yourself to remain inside, confined within four walls, while I shall move around the city quite freely.’

This threat did not frighten me in the least, and in any case I was already thinking about something else.

‘I can imagine how puzzled Their Highnesses are by my strange disappearance,’ I murmured dejectedly.

‘They are more likely indignant,’ Fandorin corrected me. ‘Viewed from the outside, the situation seems quite unambiguous. Naturally, everyone has decided that you and I conspired with Lind and have been working with him from the very beginning. Or else that we decided to take the opportunity to steal the Orlov. That is why the police are so very interested in us.’

I groaned. Why, of course, thatwas exactly howour behaviour appeared!

Fandorin also hung his head. Evidently he had finally realised the position in which we now found ourselves as a result of his inclination to irresponsible adventures. But no, it turned out to be something quite different that was saddening him.

‘Ah, Ziukin, what a magnificent operation, and it failed! Taking the place of the coachman was so simple, almost a stroke of genius. From what Emilie told me, I guessed that the driver was a deaf mute. That, plus the hat pulled so low over his eyes and the thick black beard, made the task easier. The police have the coachman now, but he will be no use to them. Not only is he mute, he is like a wild beast. That is why Lind was not afraid of exposing him to the danger of arrest. Everything should have gone so smoothly! We would have saved the boy and captured Lind.’ He gestured in annoyance and frustration. ‘Well, if we hadn’t taken him alive, we would have dropped him on the spot. It would be no loss to the human race. I ought to have gone down as well. Who could have imagined that the jeweller would not be afraid of a dagger? That was why everything went wrong. How devoted they are to Lind. What is his hold on them? No, it is simply quite incredible!’ Erast Petrovich jumped to his feet in agitation. ‘That damned Belgian was thinking about Lind, not himself. That is no mere bandit’s honour, it is absolutely genuine selfless love!’