The Jewel of St Petersburg

Twenty-six

VALENTINA FLUTTERED A WHITE SWAN-FEATHER FAN AS she walked up the Jordan staircase. It was official. She was a whore. For sale to the highest bidder. Money on the table? Take her, she’s yours.

The imperial ball at the Winter Palace was a carefully choreographed display of grandeur and extravagant wealth, one of the highlights of the St. Petersburg season. The stiff vellum invitations embossed in gold with double-headed eagles became the most desirable possessions in the city, and the competition to secure one was fierce. Hundreds of chandeliers and candelabra flooded the palace with light that sprang at her from mirrors and flashed from gold vases. At her side Maria, the niece of Countess Serova, whispered that the orchids had been transported from the Crimea by special trains, but Valentina could not bring herself to care. She had come to the ball. Done as her father asked. Maria was making small breathy noises of excitement as they walked through the Nicholas Hall.

“Valentina,” she said, “I think we’ve died and gone to heaven.”

“I’ve died and gone to hell.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Look at all those handsome officers just waiting to be snapped up.”

The crowd of guests seemed to sway in one scintillating shimmer in front of Valentina’s eyes. Lush displays of orange and lemon trees and tall wispy palms swirled through her mind. She fanned her cheeks and paid no attention to the parade of princes and princesses, to the dukes or counts, or to the bishops in their purple robes and long white veils.

I’d rather be dead than here. The thought invaded Valentina’s head. It made her think of Katya and the night of the scissors skewered into her wrist, and she shivered despite the heat.

Maria clutched her arm. “Nervous?”

“No, why should I be nervous?”

“Because your Stepan will be here. As well as his parents, Count Chernov and his wife.”

“My Stepan.” The words clung to Valentina’s tongue.

“Why do you say it like that?”

“To force it into my head.”

Maria looked at her oddly. “Is he here yet?”

Valentina made herself focus on the uniforms. The military strutted through the magnificent halls in their gaudy plumage, officers from all regiments. Cossacks in scarlet. Lancers in blue. She couldn’t see Captain Chernov.

“Maria,” she said, “I’d like a drink.”

THE VODKA HELPED. IT HAD CRANBERRIES IN IT. THAT amused her. She had chosen it from a row of chilled glasses of vodka flavored with either lemon peel, peppercorns, cranberries, or buffalo grass. She had wanted to try the buffalo grass but didn’t have the nerve because the footman almost spilled the drinks down his gold uniform when she stopped him and removed a glass from his silver tray. Maria was sipping cordial and staring at her friend wide-eyed.

“Valentina,” she hissed, “you’ll disgrace yourself.”

Valentina laughed, astonished that she could still make such a sound. “I have already disgraced myself, don’t you realize that?”

She found herself a pillar, a massive Italian marble one that wasn’t going to topple over in a hurry. She stood with her back to it. Not leaning against it exactly; only men were allowed to lean against pillars or door frames. But she touched the white pillar with the back of one satin shoe and with the tip of her elbow, just enough to keep her standing straight. Her body’s tendency to sway without warning alarmed her.

Maria had gone. Valentina wasn’t sure when that happened, but as soon as she noticed her friend across the room talking to an officer, she turned her head and found an empty space beside her. Valentina had become expert at spotting the silver trays circulating throughout the hall and summoning them with a lift of an eyebrow. She felt surprisingly warm and comfortable. Not drowsy exactly, but on the edge of it, and the terrible black abyss that had yawned at her feet only moments ago seemed to have vanished like Maria. All she could think of now was Jens. His smile. Her cheek against his naked chest, his heartbeat drumming through her mind until it became the rhythm of her thoughts.

“Valentina, I have been searching for you.”

“Captain Chernov, good evening.”

She held out her hand to him, and he turned it over and kissed her palm. As if he owned it. She became aware of music playing, the Dance of the Cygnets from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and she glanced over to one of the galleries to find an orchestra in full flow. The lilting sound of it brought to life a sharp pain in the center of her chest, a pain she thought she had drowned in the vodka.

“Valentina, my dear, how lovely you look this evening.”

His face glowed with energy under the chandeliers, and she tried to imagine what it would be like to look at this face every day for the rest of her life.

“Captain…”

“Please call me Stepan.”

“Stepan, shall we walk through the halls until Their Imperial Majesties arrive?”

He extended an arm. “Delighted to have the honor.”

With misgivings she released her contact with the pillar, but she transferred her arm to his quite safely. Walking through the halls was a good idea. It meant she wouldn’t have to look at his face.

STEPAN CHERNOV WAS COURTEOUS AND ATTENTIVE. FOR a whole half-hour she allowed him to steer her through the rooms, all the time delivering his opinion on military matters. “The tsar should kick out General Levitsky, he’s too old and forgetful, and replace him with…” Her ears grew tired and shut down. He introduced her to Makarov, the Minister of the Interior, and to Prime Minister Stolypin, a big man with a domed bald head, a neat little beard, and quick intelligent eyes. She smiled at him and he beamed with delight.

“What a jewel you have here, Chernov. Take good care of her.”

As though she were a possession, to be polished and paraded for others to view before being locked away safely at night. When Stepan led her over to his parents, she held on tight to his arm as she bobbed a shallow curtsy, feeling the backs of her eyes rolling around in her head as she did so. But she recalled little else about the encounter. On the stroke of nine o’clock in the evening Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra, emperor and empress of all the Russias, were announced by the grand marshal of the imperial court, Baron Vladimir de Freedericksz. He startled Valentina out of her skin when he banged a ten-foot ebony staff on the polished floor three times and cried out, “Their Imperial Majesties.”

Captain Chernov smiled at her and stroked her hand on his arm. She thanked all that was holy that she was wearing long white evening gloves.

The imperial party paraded slowly past, glittering in all its cascade of jewels and medals. A hundred or more in the procession, grand dukes and grand duchesses strutting past as if they owned the world. They certainly owned Russia. These people gripped it so tight in their Romanov fists that she couldn’t see how any pack of ramshackle factory workers could possibly ever wrest it from them. Despite herself she was impressed. Russia was safe. No marauding revolutionaries had a hope of seizing control of the reins of government.

“You don’t need jewels like that,” Chernov whispered in her ear. “You are more beautiful than any diamond.”

She released his arm. “What do you know,” she asked, “about what I need?”

THEY HAD BEEN DANCING FOR HOURS, BUT VALENTINA would rather dance than sit down. The warmth of the vodka began to ebb. Like the tide going out, leaving razor-sharp rocks behind.

How could her father have done this? She wanted to rip off the dress she was wearing, cream silk studded with hundreds of pearls. Thousands of roubles, that was what it had cost. What about all the others in her dressing room? In her mother’s dressing room? All on borrowed money. And there was that word that terrified her, that made her feet falter and her heart stop. Embezzlement. Her father was a minister of finance to the tsar, with his hands in the Romanov coffers.

“Why so serious?” Chernov asked with a squeeze of her hand.They were dancing a waltz, and his arm around her held her possessively.

“I was looking,” she said, “at the different military uniforms here tonight. What a warlike nation we are.”

He smiled at her indulgently. “My dear Valentina, you have to understand that Russia is a country that has always been held together throughout its history not by its laws, not by its civilization, but by its army.”

“I thought we’d outgrown all that. What about our commerce and agriculture?”

He laughed, dismissing her opinion as if it were tinsel. “No. Russia is, and always will be, a military state.”

He danced well, gliding across the room with easy control. But she hadn’t finished. “I heard that some apprentices were attacked the other day in the railway sidings.”

“Not attacked exactly, just taught a lesson.”

“What were they doing wrong?”

“Valentina.” He spoke her name sharply. “Not now.”

“Stepan, were you with the Hussars who attacked the apprentices?”

Stiffly he brought his gaze back to her. “Yes, I was there.” He paused, examining her face. “Do you have any comment to make on that?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I have no comment.”

AT MIDNIGHT A BUFFET SUPPER WAS SERVED. VALENTINA ate almost nothing. Round tables had been laid out in the Concert Hall with gold cutlery and white damask cloths embroidered with the Romanov eagle. One chair was kept vacant at every table for Tsar Nicholas as he circulated among his guests. Halfway through the meal, the sight of all the zakuski and pheasant became too much for her, so she excused herself from the table and walked into one of the anterooms where a female figure in a pale gown stood at one of the tall windows staring out into the night. Valentina approached and stood directly behind her.

“Good evening, Countess Serova.”

The countess spun around, and Valentina saw the brandy glass in her hand. “The piano player again, I do believe. What are you doing out here?” she asked.

“I was hot.”

The countess took a sip of her drink, and a small smile of anticipation softened her lips. “Are you thirsty, too?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me.”

Valentina followed the elegant figure to a long table in the next room. At its center rose a leaping dolphin sculpted in ice, but Valentina gave it little more than a glance. An array of drinks in crystal glasses was arranged around it: cordials, lemonade, and fruit juices to the right, wine and spirits to the left.

“A glass of wine?” the countess suggested. “Or maybe something stronger?”

“Peach juice, I think.” Valentina picked up one of the tall glasses and raised it to her lips. “So refreshing.”

The blue eyes of Countess Serova clouded with annoyance. She nipped the edge of her lower lip with her teeth and walked away, clearly tired of the game. But Valentina remained. It was cooler here. She lifted a sliver of ice and held it to her temple while she sipped her drink. When the fruit juice was half gone she selected another glass from the platter of ice, a different one this time, and tipped it into the remains of her peach juice.

YOU’VE BEEN GONE A LONG TIME.” STEPAN CHERNOV frowned, his blond eyebrows lifting as Valentina took her seat. “Are you unwell?”

“No, not at all.” She smiled at him. “I met Countess Serova, and we were arguing about which of you military men have the most attractive uniforms.”

“I hope you said the Hussar Guards.”

“Of course.” She trailed her hand down her throat just to watch his gaze follow its path. “As if I notice anyone else’s.”

He laughed and launched into a story about a bet on a cockfight, but Valentina lost track of what the point of it was.

“I’ll just fetch myself another drink,” she announced.

“Let me ask one of the servants to fetch it.”

“Thank you, but no. I feel like a little exercise.”

“Be quick.” He gestured to where Tsar Nicholas was seated at a nearby table. “We have the honor of His Imperial Majesty’s company next.”

As she hurried through the huge gilded doors, a thought struck her. He liked telling her what to do.