The Jewel of St Petersburg (4 page)

“Liev, where is ... ?”

His father, Simeon Popkov, was there in front of her. The stable master was lying stretched out on his back on the ground, limbs askew, black eyes open. His throat had been cut to the bone. She’d never have believed there could be so much blood. Crimson seemed to flood her world. It had taken over his tunic, soaked his hair, laid claim to the floor. Specks of scarlet floated in the air, and the smell of it made her choke.

Her mind grew hazy. She blinked, as if her eyelids could sweep away what lay before her, blinked again and this time focused on the Cossack’s son. Tears were coursing down his cheeks and his hand was holding his father’s, wrapping the strong fingers in a grip that would cheat death if it could. She put a hand on the young man’s back, feeling the tremors under his shirt.

“Liev,” she whispered gently. She touched his hair, the black wiry curls, wanting to draw out the splinters of pain but not knowing how. “I’m so sorry. He was a good man. Why would they harm him as well?”

Liev raised his head and gazed bleakly at the splashes of crimson on the wooden walls. Words roared out of him. “My father was nothing to them. Nothing! They did it just to prove they could, to show their power. And to give warning to those who work for other families of your class.”

She stood there for a long moment, her chest too tight to breathe, seeing in her head the broken figure ofKatya, reliving the expression in her father’s eyes. Listening to the pain in the guttural moans that shuddered out of the Cossack’s throat. Her hand lay on his shoulder in an attempt to offer comfort, though she knew that comfort was the last thing either of them wanted. A thrashing tide of anger was rising within her.

“Liev,” she declared, “they will pay for this.”

He lifted his dark eyes to hers. “I’ll not rest,” he growled, “and I’ll not forget. Not till they’re dead.”

Her gaze slid to the dead body of Simeon, who had been the first to lift her up onto a horse’s back when she was scarcely three years old and the first to pick her up from the dirt each time she fell off. He would dust her down, tease her with his huge laugh, and throw her straight back on again.

“I’ll not forget,” she echoed. “Nor forgive.”

T
HE HOUSE LAY SILENT, THE ROOMS DARKENED. EVERYONE moved on tiptoe and spoke in low whispers, the way they would around the dead. Valentina wanted to throw open the curtains and shout,
She’s still alive!
But she kept quiet, ignoring the ache that crippled her chest, and sat close beside her mother on the chaise longue in the drawing room.

They were past words. Locked inside themselves, waiting for the doctor’s heavy tread to descend the stairs. The room was hot, the sun straining to creep between the curtains, but Valentina remained cold deep in the center of her bones. Her eyes followed her mother’s delicate fingers, watched them crouch in the lap of her lavender morning gown, hooked around each other, twisting and digging, tugging at the lace cuff on her sleeve, while the rest of her slight figure sat quiet. It upset Valentina more than the expression of despair on her mother’s face or the two fierce bursts of color on the white skin of her cheeks. Elizaveta Ivanova was a person who believed in restraint at all times. To see her hands so out of control made the world feel unsafe.

“How much longer?” Valentina murmured.

“The doctor has been up there too long. It’s a bad sign.”

“No, it means he’s still helping her. He hasn’t given up.” She tried to smile. “You know how stubborn Katya is.”

Elizaveta Ivanova gave one dry harsh sob, then silenced herself. She had been brought up as part of that breed of women who regarded a wife’s role in life as being a decorative and largely voiceless adornment to her husband, to look attractive and well mannered on his arm at all times, and to produce children for him, one of whom was expected to be a boy to continue the bloodline. In this latter area she had failed. She had given birth to two healthy girls but seemed unable to forgive herself the lack of a son, viewing it as a punishment from God for some unknown mortal sin. Now this curse on her younger daughter.

Despite her mother’s daily routine of social engagements, Valentina sometimes thought her lonely. She slipped an arm around her in a rare gesture of physical contact between them and was astonished by the warmth of her body. Her own skin was chill as marble. Even now her mother’s luxuriant golden hair was elegantly dressed on top of her head and she sat rigidly upright inside her armor of French silk and lace, of amethyst brooch and whalebone stays. It occurred to Valentina for the first time that maybe her mother already knew how dangerous a place the world was, and that was why she never relaxed. Security police were scouring the fields and forest, but so far had found no men with rifles.

“Mama,” she whispered softly, “if the revolutionaries hadn’t kept me in the forest, I’d have been back here long before Katya woke, she’d have been with me down at the creek instead of wandering into Papa’s...”

Elizaveta Ivanova turned her head to inspect her daughter, her nostrils flared, her eyes almost colorless as if their usual deep blue pigment had been washed away by hidden tears. “You are not to blame, Valentina.” She held her daughter’s hand in hers.

“Papa thinks I am.”

“Your father is angry. He needs someone to blame.”

“He could blame the hooded men in the forest.”

“Ah.” Elizaveta Ivanova released a long sad sigh. “That would be too easy. Be patient with him, my dear. He has more on his mind than you know.”

Valentina shuddered. Nothing, she was certain, would be easy from now on.

T
HE BEDROOM WAS STIFLING. WHAT WERE THEY TRYING to do to her sister? Suffocate her? A fire burned in the grate although it was a hot summer’s day, the curtains were drawn shut, and a dim light cast shadows that to Valentina felt like secretive figures hiding in the gloom. She had been allowed five minutes, that was all, and only because she had pleaded so hard. Immediately she knelt beside the bed, rested her arms on the embroidered silk counterpane, and balanced her chin on her hand, so that her eyes were level with her sister’s.

“Katya,” she whispered. “Katya, I’m sorry.”

The face on the pillow tugged at her heart. It was Katya as she would be in fifty years’ time, her skin and her hair gray and lifeless, her lips thin, drawn into a tight line of pain. Valentina gently kissed her cheek and smelled the dirt on her. Once when she was young, one of the gardeners had dug out a rats’ nest from under a shed, and she and Katya had watched wide-eyed when the small furry bodies squealed as they fought to escape. They had given off a rank musky odor that had stuck in Valentina’s nostrils. That was what Katya’s skin smelled of now.

She didn’t know if Katya was awake. Conscious or unconscious. They said the doctor had given her something. What did that mean? Morphine? How could her precious blond sister who was always bursting with laughter and energy be hiding under this little old lady’s skin? Tentatively Valentina touched the dusty arm that lay outside the cover, and it felt like a stranger’s, gritty and rough. Where were the satin-smooth limbs that loved to swim in the creek and pull down branches from the willows to build silvery dens to hide in?

A large tear splashed down onto her sister’s arm and startled Valentina. She didn’t know she was crying. She rested her cheek against her sister’s hot arm, and it felt like a furnace under her skin.

“I, Valentina Ivanova, caused this,” she murmured under her breath, so that her ears as well as her mind would bear witness to the words. She scraped away her tears and said loudly, “Katya, it’s me, Valentina.”

No response.

She kissed her sister’s filthy hair. “Can you hear me?”

No response.

“Please, Katya.”

A gray-gold eyelash fluttered.

“Katya!”

A slit of blue showed in one eye.

Valentina leaned closer. “Hello,
privet,
my sweet.”

The slit widened a fraction. Katya’s lips moved, but no sound emerged.

Valentina placed her ear to her sister’s lips and felt a faint whisper of breath. “What is it? Are you in pain? The doctor has...”

“I’m frightened.”

Valentina’s throat closed. She kissed the soft cheek. “Don’t be frightened, Katya. I’m here. I’ll look after you and keep you safe. For the rest of our lives.” She squeezed her sister’s small hand and saw a slight movement at the side of her tight bruised mouth. A smile.

“Promise me,” Katya breathed.

“I promise. On my life.”

Slowly Katya’s eyes fell shut and the narrow slit of blue vanished. But the edge of the smile stayed, and Valentina cradled her limp hand until they came and made her leave.

Three

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA DECEMBER 1910

G
IRLS,
MESDEMOISELLES,
TODAY IS A GREAT HONOR FOR OUR school. A day to remember. I expect the best from each of you. Today you must shine brighter than...”

The headmistress stopped in mid flight. Her neatly drawn eyebrows rose in disgust. The girls held their breath, waiting to see on which wretched creature her wrath would fall. In her somber dress with its high neck and cameo brooch, Madame Petrova was marching up and down in front of the benches in the grand hall of the Ekaterininsky Institute, eyeing each pupil with the unbending scrutiny of a general reviewing his troops.

“Nadia,” she said crisply.

Valentina’s heart sank for her friend, who had dropped ink on her clean pinafore.

“Sit up straight, girl. Just because you are in the back row doesn’t mean you can slouch. Do you want the broom handle tied to your back?”

“No, Madame.” Nadia straightened her shoulders but kept her hands discreetly over her soiled pinafore.

“Aleksandra, remove that curl from your cheek.”

She glided farther along the ranks.

“Emilya, put your feet together, you are not a horse. Valentina, stop fiddling at once!”

Valentina flushed and stared down at her fingers. They were drumming on her knees, desperate to keep warm. She couldn’t play with cold fingers. But she folded them obediently on her lap. Her heart was hammering. It was always like this before a performance, but she had practiced the Nocturne till it accompanied her through her night dreams, the way the sound of screaming horses still did. She hadn’t ridden a horse since the day of the explosion and had no intention of ever doing so again, but still the sound of them wouldn’t leave her, however hard she thundered across the piano keys.

“Valentina.”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Remember who you are performing for today. The tsar himself.”

“Yes, Madame.”

This time she would play Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat better than ever before.

J
ENS FRIIS GLANCED AT THE DOMED CLOCK ON THE WALL. The afternoon was crawling past as though it had frostbite in its toes, and he was tempted to yawn.

He stretched out his legs and shifted position with irritation. He was tired of the interminable poems and songs, as well as uncomfortable on an absurd chair that was not built for someone like himself with limbs like a giraffe’s. Worse, he was annoyed with Countess Serova for dragging him to this schoolgirl frivolity when he was short of time. He needed to study the blueprints of the new construction that had only come in this morning and, damn it, it was cold here in this hall. How on earth did the poor wretches stand it? On the benches arranged along the wall, the rows of pupils sat stiff and upright in their dark frocks with white capes and pinafores, like delicate snow carvings.