The Winter Queen (30 page)

“You follow me, follow me, Your Honor.”

Timofei leapt to his feet and, glancing around at every moment, led Fandorin back to the first floor, into the baroness’s study.

“I just happened to peep once, by chance…She wouldn’t let me anywhere near it. She didn’t trust me. Why should she—a Russian Orthodox, none of their English blood in me.” Timofei crossed himself. “Only that Andrew of hers was ever allowed in there, but not me, oh no!”

He darted around behind the desk and turned a handle on a cabinet, and the cabinet suddenly moved to one side, revealing a small copper door.

“Open it!” ordered Erast Fandorin.

Timofei crossed himself again three times and pushed the door. It opened without a sound, revealing a stairway that led down into darkness.

Prodding Timofei in the back, Fandorin began cautiously descending. The stairs ended in a blank wall, but there was a low corridor running off at a sharp angle to the right.

“Go on! Go on!” Erast Fandorin hissed at the reluctant Timofei.

They turned the corner into pitch-black darkness.
should have brought a candle
, Fandorin thought, reaching into his pocket for matches with his left hand, but suddenly somewhere ahead of him there was a bright flash and a loud report. Timofei gave a gasp and sank to the floor, but Erast Fandorin held his Herstal out in front of him and pressed the trigger, holding it down until the hammer began clicking against empty shell cases. A hollow silence fell. With trembling fingers Fandorin took out his matchbox and struck a match. Timofei was slumped against the wall in a motionless heap. Taking a few steps forward, Erast Fandorin saw Andrew lying on his back on the ground. The trembling flame glimmered for a moment in the glassy eyes before it went out.

On finding oneself in the dark, the great Fouché teaches us, one should screw one’s eyes tight shut and count to thirty to give the pupils time to contract, and then one’s vision will be capable of discerning the most insignificant source of light. In order to be quite certain, Erast Fandorin counted to forty before opening his eyes, and indeed there was a ray of light filtering through from somewhere. Extending ahead of him the hand clutching the now useless Herstal, he took a step forward, then another, then a third. In front of him he saw a door standing slightly ajar, a faint beam of light emerging from the gap. The baroness could only be in there. Fandorin stepped decisively toward the glowing beam and pushed the door hard.

His gaze fell on a small room with shelves covering the walls. In the middle of the room stood a desk on which a candle, burning in a bronze candlestick, illuminated the face of Lady Astair, tracing its lines in shadows.

“Come in, my boy,” she said calmly. “I have been expecting you.”

Erast Fandorin stepped inside and the door suddenly slammed shut behind him. With a shudder he turned around and saw that the door had no hinge and no handle.

“Come a little closer,” her ladyship said in a quiet voice. “I wish to take a closer look at your face, because it is the face of fate. You are a pebble that was lying on my road, the pebble over which I was fated to stumble.”

Stung by this comparison, Fandorin moved closer to the desk and noticed a smooth metal casket lying in front of the baroness.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“We ‘ll come to that shortly. What have you done with Gebhardt?”

“He’s dead. It’s his own fault—he shouldn’t have argued with a bullet,” Fandorin replied rather coarsely, trying not to think about the fact that he had killed two people in a matter of minutes.

“That is a great loss for mankind. He was a strange man, obsessive, but a truly great scientist. So now there is one Azazel less.”

“What is Azazel?” Fandorin blurted out. “And what has that demon got to do with your orphans?”

“Azazel is no demon, my boy. He is a great symbol of the savior and enlightener of mankind. The Lord God created this world, created men and left them to their own devices. But men are so weak and so blind, they transformed God’s world into hell. Mankind would have perished long ago if it were not for those outstanding individuals who have appeared among them from time to time. They are not demons and not gods. I call them
hero civilisateur
. Thanks to each of them, mankind has taken a leap forward. Prometheus gave us fire. Moses gave us the concept of the law. Christ gave us a moral core. But the most precious of these heroes was the Judaic Azazel, who taught man a sense of his own dignity. It is said in the Book of Enoch: “He was moved by love for man and revealed unto him secrets learned in the heavens.” He gave man a mirror, so that man could see behind himself—that is, so that he had a memory and could remember his past. Thanks to Azazel a man is able to practice arts and crafts and defend his home. Thanks to Azazel woman was transformed from a submissive bearer of children into an equal human being possessing the freedom to choose—whether to be ugly or beautiful, whether to be a mother or an Amazon, to live for the sake of her family or the whole of mankind. God merely dealt man his cards, but Azazel teaches him how to play to win. Every one of my charges is an Azazel, although not all of them know it.”

“How do you mean ‘not all of them’?” Fandorin interrupted.

“Only a few are initiated into the secret goal, only the most faithful and incorruptible,” her ladyship explained. “It is they who undertake all the dirty work, so that the rest of my children might remain unsullied. Azazel is my advance guard, destined gradually, little by little, to lay hold of the wheel that steers the rudder of the world. Oh, how our planet will blossom when it is led by my Azazels! And it could have happened so soon—in a mere twenty years…The other alumni of the Astair Houses, uninitiated into the secret of Azazel, simply make their own way through life, bringing inestimable benefit to mankind. I merely follow their successes, rejoicing in their achievements, and I know that if the need should arise, not one of them will refuse to help their mother. Ah, what will become of them without me? What will become of the world? But no matter, Azazel lives on. He will carry my work to its conclusion.”

Erast Fandorin interjected indignantly, “I’ve seen your Azazels, your ‘faithful and incorruptible’ devotees! Morbid and Franz, Andrew and that other one with the eyes of a fish, who killed Akhtyrtsev! Are these your vanguard, my lady? Are these the most worthy?”

“Not these alone. But these also. Do you not remember, my friend, I told you that not every one of my children is able to find his way in the modern world, because his gift has remained stranded in the distant past or will be required only in the distant future? Well then, it is pupils such as these who make the most faithful and devoted executors. Some of my children are the brain, others are the hands. But the man who eliminated Akhtyrtsev is not one of my children. He is a temporary ally of ours.”

The baroness’s fingers absentmindedly caressed the polished surface of the casket, and as if by accident pressed a small round button.

“That is all, my dear young man. You and I have two minutes left. We shall depart this life together. Unfortunately, I cannot let you live. You would cause harm to my children.”

“What is that thing?” cried Erast Fandorin, seizing hold of the casket, which proved to be quite heavy. “A bomb?”

“Yes,” said Lady Astair with a smile of commiseration. “A clockwork mechanism. The invention of one of my talented boys. There are thirty-second boxes, two-hour boxes, even twelve-hour boxes. It is impossible to open the box and stop the mechanism. This bomb is set for one hundred and twenty seconds. I shall perish together with my archive. My life is over now, but what I have achieved is not so very little. My cause will be continued and people will yet remember me with a kind word.”

Erast Fandorin attempted to pick the button out with his nails, but it was useless. Then he rushed to the door and began feeling all over it and hammering on it with his fists. The blood throbbed in his ears, counting out the pulse of time.

“Lizanka!” the doomed Fandorin groaned in his despair. “My lady! I do not wish to die! I am young! I am in love!”

Lady Astair gazed at him compassionately. Some kind of struggle was obviously taking place within her. “Promise me that you will not make hunting down my children the goal of your life,” she said in a quiet voice, looking into Fandorin’s eyes.

“I swear it!” he exclaimed, willing at that moment to promise anything.

After an agonizing pause that lasted an eternity, her ladyship gave a gentle, motherly smile.

“Very well, my boy. Have your life. But hurry, you have forty seconds.”

She reached under the desk and the copper door squeaked as it swung open into the room.

Casting a final glance at the figure of the gray-haired woman sitting motionless in the flickering candlelight, Fandorin launched himself along the dark corridor in immense bounds. His momentum flung him hard against the wall, then he scrambled up the stairs on all fours, straightened up, and crossed the study in two great leaps.

TEN SECONDS LATER the oak doors of the wing of the Astair House were almost knocked off their hinges by a powerful impact and a young man with a face contorted by fear fell out and tumbled head over heels across the porch. He dashed along the quiet, shady street as far as the corner, where he stopped, panting heavily. He looked around and stood there motionless.

Seconds passed and nothing happened. The sun complacently gilded the crowns of the poplars, a ginger cat dozed on a bench, and chickens clucked somewhere in a yard nearby.

Erast Fandorin clutched at his wildly pounding heart. She had deceived him! Tricked him like some little boy! And escaped through some rear entrance!

He broke into sobs of impotent rage, and as if in reply, the wing of the building responded with an identical sobbing. Its walls trembled, its roof swayed almost imperceptibly, and from somewhere under the ground he heard the hollow boom of the detonation.

in which our hero bids farewell to his youth

INQUIRE OF ANY INHABITANT OF RUSSIA’S first capital concerning the best time to enter into lawful wedlock, and naturally the reply one will receive is that a man who is thoroughly serious in his intentions and wishes to set his family life on a firm foundation from the very outset must certainly not marry at any other time than late September, for that is the month most ideally suited to embarking on a long and tranquil voyage across the waves of life’s wide ocean. September in Moscow is sated and indolent, trimmed with gold brocade and ruddy cheeked with the maple’s crimson blush, like a merchant’s wife from the Zamoskvorechie district decked out in her finest. If one marries on the final Sunday of the month the sky is certain to be a translucent azure and the sun will shine with a sedate delicacy, so that the groom will not perspire in his tight starched collar and close-fitting black tailcoat, nor will the bride freeze in that gauzy, ethereal, enchanting concoction for which no appropriate name even exists.

Choosing the church in which to celebrate the wedding is an entire science in itself. Thanks be to God, in golden-domed Moscow the choice is extensive, but that merely increases the responsibility of the decision. The genuine old-time Muscovite knows it is good to get married on Sretenka Street, in the Church of the Assumption in Pechatniki, for then husband and wife will share a long life together and die on the same day. The church most auspicious for the generation of numerous offspring is St. Nicholas of the Great Cross, which has extended across an entire city block in the Kitai-Gorod district. Those who prize quiet comfort and domesticity above all else should choose St. Pimen the Great in Starye Vorotniki. If the groom is a military gentleman, who nonetheless does not wish to end his days on the battlefield but close to the home hearth in the bosom of his family, then the wisest thing to do would be to take the marriage vows in the Church of St. George on Vspolie Street. And, of course, no loving mother would ever allow her daughter to marry on Varvarka Street, in the church of the holy martyr Varvara, which would doom the poor soul to a lifetime of torment and suffering.

However, individuals of high birth or rank do not really enjoy much freedom of choice, for their church must be both stately and spacious in order to accommodate a guest list that represents the cream of Moscow society. And ‘all of Moscow’ had indeed gathered at the wedding ceremony that was drawing to its conclusion in the decorous and grandiose Zlatoustinskaya Church. The idle onlookers crowding around the entrance, where the long line of carriages was drawn up, kept pointing out the carriage of the governor-general, Prince Vladimir Andreevich Dolgoruky himself, a sure sign that the wedding celebration was definitely from the very top flight.

Admission to the church had been strictly by personal invitation, but even so the assembled guests numbered as many as two hundred. There were numerous glittering uniforms from the military and the state service; numerous ladies with naked shoulders; numerous tall coiffures, ribbons, decorations, and diamonds. All the chandeliers and candles were lit; the ceremony had been going on for a long time and the guests were tired. All the women, regardless of their age and marital status, were excited and emotional, but the men were clearly languishing as they exchanged remarks about other business in low voices—they had finished discussing the young couple ages ago. The whole of Moscow society knew the father of the bride, Full Privy Counselor Alexander Apollodorovich von Evert-Kolokoltsev, and they had already seen the pretty Elizaveta von Evert-Kolokoltseva at numerous balls, since she had come out the previous season. So curiosity was focused for the main part on the groom, Erast Petrovich Fandorin. Not very much was known about him: a St. Petersburg sort who made flying visits to Moscow on important business; a careerist with close connections to the inner sanctum of state power; not, as yet, of very high rank but still young and climbing the ladder very fast. There were not many people his age sporting the order of St. Vladimir in their buttonholes. Privy Counselor von Evert-Kolokoltsev was clearly a prudent man with an eye to the future.