The Concubine's Secret

26

Fog rose from the River Moskva. It slunk in long tendrils across the road, sneaking up to front doors and unexpectedly swallowing people whole when they emerged from their homes into the street. Sledges slid into it and vanished.

Alexei stood still. He had no desire to move. He felt like a ghost, barely there, a lone figure caught between reality and non-reality. Each time he heard footsteps on the broad steps, leading up to where he was propped against the stone pillar of the Cathedral’s entrance, his breath quickened with expectation. This time it was real, not a figment of his exhausted mind.

A woman drifted out of the white layers of moist air rising towards him. He held out a hand to her but she veered away abruptly and he realised she thought he was a beggar. The streets were full of them. She had heavy black eyebrows and thick ankles, he registered that much. Not Lydia after all then. Nor Antonina, whose ankles were slender, the bones beautifully carved. He yearned for her touch now to rid him of this deadness. His eyes closed as the cold crept with sharp fingers through his thin jacket and into his blood, making it sluggish and stubborn, painful as it pushed through his veins.

It was gone noon. Long gone. He forced his eyelids open in case he missed her. In this fog she might pass three feet from him and not know he was there. He tilted his head back but the golden domes of the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer had ceased to exist, stolen from sight by the dank air and something fluttered on the edge of his thoughts. Something about this church. He’d read something. That was it. It was going to be blown up. Involuntarily he stepped away from the pillar as if it were about to explode, but immediately felt the absence of its stone solidity at his back. Is that what worshippers would feel, the loss of solidity, of belief?

He walked slowly round the outside of the great towering building till he came to the River Moskva at its back, where the water flowed in ripples of steel. It looked so hard, so substantial. He started to cross the bridge that spanned it but had to stop halfway because the muscles in his legs were shaking with exhaustion. He leaned on the parapet and was aware that he had disappeared. This close to the river he was wrapped in a cocoon of fog, invisible and unknown.

It didn’t matter, Lydia wasn’t coming. Had she lied to him? No. He shook his head. She didn’t lie to him in the letter, he was certain. Either she had left Moscow – with or without their father – or she was unable to make it to the church. Whatever the truth, he couldn’t help either of them now, not Jens Friis, not Lydia. But he missed her, missed her laugh and her stubborn chin, and the way she knew exactly how to get under his skin. And her moments of unexpected gentleness, he missed them more than ever now.

The journey to Moscow had cost him dear and stripped him of everything, both physical and mental. It had taken all his strength to get here, walking for weeks without end, no food, losing track of time. He leaned his head over the bridge and stared down at the cushion of thick white air that hung just below him. It looked tempting. On that soft pillow he could rest at last and dream again of galloping through the autumn woods beside his father.