The Jewel of St Petersburg

Twenty-seven

JENS WAS SMOKING ONE OF TSAR NICHOLAS’S MONOGRAMMED cigarettes. He tried to imagine what it must be like to have your initials stamped or gilded or embroidered on everything around you. It meant you could never forget who you were. He had come to the imperial ball only to please Minister Davidov. Jens was not in the mood for gaiety. But he had talked to the men Davidov had gathered together in one of the more discreet anterooms, talked business till the air was blue with smoke and had shaken hands at the end of it. Even so, he didn’t trust them. In Petersburg you didn’t trust anyone.

Not even a pair of dark laughing eyes. He grimaced and stubbed out the cigarette.

“What’s the matter with you this evening?” Davidov asked. “You look ready to bite.”

“I’m here. I’ve talked with your damn money men. Don’t expect me to smile at you as well.”

Minister Davidov chuckled to himself and swirled his brandy around in its glass. His hawkish face looked pleased, which was rare.

“It’s got to be a woman,” the minister declared.

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ve seen you at work, Friis, and I’ve seen you risking your life in one of your blasted tunnels. I’ve seen you bad tempered and bloody minded. But I’ve never seen you like this. Look at yourself.”

Both men were wearing black frock coats with gold lapels, but Jens’s was crumpled and he was slumped in the brocade chair, his limbs awry.

“I’m here to do business,” Jens growled. “Nothing more.”

He lit himself another cigarette, but as he did so he saw a woman enter the room. At an imperial ball the ladies were obliged to wear white or cream, so at a brief glance she was just one among many in an elegantly designed pale gown. But the way she walked alerted him, a haughty carriage that approached with an eagerness he did not welcome.

“Countess Serova.” He rose to his feet and bowed over her extended hand.

“Jens, what are you doing burying yourself away in here? Don’t you know that your little pet pianist is performing for His Imperial Majesty?” Her smile was as hard as a cat’s claw. “You should hurry. She has drawn quite a crowd.”

HE COULDN’T HELP HER. IT WAS LIKE WATCHING A KITTEN drown. The hands struggling. The mouth gasping for air. The waves of relentless scorn washing over her, the derision dragging her down. When he first walked in he thought Valentina was teasing her audience, joking with them by hitting wrong notes. But it was no joke. She was perched on the edge of the stool at a grand piano, and the sight of her wrenched the heart from Jens.

The performance was a disaster. Valentina could have burst into tears and rushed from the room, but she didn’t. She sat there, teeth gritted. She kept playing. Her head and her hands seemed to have severed contact. She was playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and nothing could have been more inappropriate: There was no joy to be found in this room. To one side on elaborate gold chairs the tsar and tsarina sat stiffly, surrounded by more than a hundred of St. Petersburg’s elite who had gathered in this smaller hall where the Balalaika Orchestra had been playing earlier. Whispers slithered around the room.

Valentina, my love, if I could give you my fingers, I would.

Tsar Nicholas tugged with annoyance at his neat little beard, and his frown grew petulant. Finally, without a word he rose, offered his wife his arm, and walked out of the room. A trickle of guests followed, and Jens noticed that the countess was one of the first.

Damn you all for your rudeness, she’s still playing, still trying.

At the front of the audience stood Captain Chernov, and his face was a mask of scarlet, as vivid as the uniform on his back. Jens felt a sick twist of his gut. What Valentina’s father said must be true; the marriage must be arranged because already the captain was seeing her as an extension of himself, regarded her humiliation as his own. Jens loathed him for it. Not for the arrogant assumption that her behavior reflected on him, but for the fact that the man felt humiliated. Not sorry for Valentina. Not sympathetic for her plight. Not willing to cut off his right hand to get her out of the drowning pit she was in. Just humiliated. Ashamed of her.

The music came to an abrupt end and Jens led a ripple of applause, then strolled forward. “Valentina Ivanova,” he spoke in a loud voice, “how generous of you to agree to play for us when you are unwell.”

She lifted her eyes to his. There were no tears. She raised her chin, straightened her back, and rose from the stool with all her customary grace, placing one hand to her temple to indicate a slight headache. She smiled at him, and he gave her his arm. In no hurry, they walked together through the gathered finery and feathers of the guests toward the door. She didn’t even glance at Captain Chernov.

JENS HELD HER. SMELLED THE PERFUME OF HER HAIR AND the misery on her breath. He held her clenched against him until her trembling ceased and her head grew still, instead of banging itself over and over against the hard ridge of his collarbone.

“Valentina”-he kissed her burning ear-“forget them. Not one person there is worth a moment of your distress.” He kissed the top of her head and drew her into a niche behind one of the marble pillars. “You were wonderful.”

“I was terrible.”

“No, you were magnificent. Drunk as a skunk and still able to make Beethoven sound like Beethoven.”

“My stupid fingers made a million mistakes.”

“No one noticed.”

“What?” Her head jerked up, her eyes not quite in focus. It took a moment, but she registered his teasing smile and her mouth toppled into a crooked line as she started to laugh. “You don’t think that the tsar noticed anything wrong?”

“Not a thing.”

“Thank goodness.”

Her body in its pale silky gown rested against his, warm and pliant, and his arm around her waist held her on her feet as she let her head tip back with all the joy that had been missing from her music. She laughed in a long luxurious release of tension.

“You liar,” she breathed, a husky unfettered sound.

He brushed his lips along the curve of her throat. “Come away,” he whispered. “Come away with me now.”

She slid her arms around his neck as he gently raised her head and looked intently into her dark eyes. They were half-closed, just a gleam of brilliance beneath long lashes.

“Marry me?” he asked.

“Kiss me first.”

He pressed his lips hungrily down on hers, and she responded with all the passion, fury, and joy that she had meant to pour into her music.

“Jens,” she murmured, “let’s go out and look at the stars. Ask me again under the stars.”

It was cloudy tonight, but it didn’t matter. He would describe each one for her, each blaze of light dazzling faraway worlds, and they would gaze at them together.

She stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth. “Ask me again, Jens Friis,” she whispered.

The slap on the side of his face snapped his attention away from Valentina. He felt the sting like a snakebite on his cheek, and his fist struck out at the uniformed arm as it swung at him again, a white glove flapping loose in its hand. As he stared at its owner, his heart sang with Viking blood. Thor’s hammer pounded in his chest.

“Captain Chernov,” he said, “you do me an insult.”

The glove was tossed at his feet.

“Take your hands off her,” Chernov shouted. His mouth quivered with rage. “Take your hands off her or I swear to God I will kill you here and now with my bare fists in front of the tsar himself.”

“Feel free to try.”

“Stop it,” Valentina cried. “Stop it.” She seized Jens’s arm, and he couldn’t bring himself to shake her off. “Please,” she shouted, “someone help to stop them.”

Other uniforms arrived, Davidov’s dark frown, a stream of invective and angry voices gathered close. Jens paid them no heed.

“I demand satisfaction,” Chernov snapped, while two officers in blue pinned back each of his arms. “My seconds will call on you tomorrow.”

“It will be my pleasure.”

“No.” Valentina stood apart from them both, white faced. “I swear I will marry neither of you if you fight a duel.”

Jens could feel her trickling away through his fingers like dry sand. He wasn’t willing to lose her, not like this, not now. Slowly, with rigid control, he turned to Captain Chernov, clicked his heels in a curt bow, and held out his hand. Chernov hesitated, glanced uncertainly for a second at Valentina as though assessing her worth, then reluctantly shook hands. Neither spoke.

“Thank God.” Valentina released a shudder of relief and shook her head. “What is it that turns sane men into brainless fighting machines?”

Neither man offered an answer, so she turned on her heel and walked away with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Tomorrow,” Jens muttered brusquely under his breath the moment she was out of earshot. “I will expect to hear from you tomorrow.”

LIGHT AND MOVEMENT, THEY SPLINTERED HER BRAIN. THE next morning Valentina took each narrow stair with great care, her hands feeling for the walls on either side of her, her eyes squinting even in the gloom. If she could keep her head immobile on her neck, there was a chance she would make it to the top. But halfway up the wooden flight of stairs a mouse scurried across her shoe with such speed that she lost her footing and stumbled.

“Chyort!” she muttered. “Devil take you!”

“Who’s there?” a voice bellowed from upstairs.

Her eardrums vibrated painfully.

“Ssh, don’t shout.” She scrambled up the remaining steps in an ungainly rush in case she toppled back down into the stables below. Once at the top she allowed the narrow slit of her eyes to open further and looked around with interest. She’d never been up here before in the grooms’ quarters. There was a long dusty corridor ahead of her. Skylights on the left let in vicious amounts of sunlight, but on the right ran a row of small cubicles, each with a door. Only one was closed. She banged on it.

“Go away.”

“Chyort!” she swore again. “I’m not coming all the way up here for nothing, damn you.” She pushed open the door and walked in. The light was dim, thank heavens, the window small and unwashed. The room, if it could be called such, smelled of horses and sweat. “So you’re still alive, Liev. They didn’t manage to kill you off.”

“Weeds never die.”

“Here, I’ve brought you something.”

From inside a shawl that was tied around her waist she drew out a full bottle of vodka and a packet of cigarettes. Popkov’s black eyes gleamed. He was sitting upright on a hard chair beside the bed, but he didn’t look good. His eye sockets were bruised deep purple, his nose was broken at an odd angle, and there were gashes on his forehead and lips. As he reached for the bottle she saw that one of his fingers was missing its nail, a black clump of dried blood in its place. She felt fury stirring up the acid in her stomach.

“It’s good vodka from my father’s cabinet.” She put on a smile for him. “Not that rotgut rubbish you gave me.”

He grinned and took a swig, breathing out heavily with contentment. “The only medicine I need.”

“Liev, how are you? Really, I mean. Is the pain bad?”

He studied her through swollen eyes. “I’ll live.” He raised the bottle. “Want some?”

“No, thank you.”

“You look like you need it.” He chuckled, and she saw him wince and rub his ribs.

She was tempted, but looked away from the bottle. “Not much of a home, is it, this place?”

“It’s enough.”

A bed, a chair, a shelf, and some hooks. Enough? Liev was twenty-two years old, a grown man, and already he thought this was enough.

“Is there water here?” she asked.

“In the stable yard.”

“I’ll fetch some.”

“Don’t bother.”

She thought of the stairs and her stomach cramped. “No bother. You need attention.”

It took her a while and a trip back to the house, but she carried up an enamel bowl of warm water and a plate of black bread and cheese. Under her arm she’d tucked a pack of bandages and dressings from Nurse Sonya, who complained bitterly about wasting them on “that filthy Cossack.” Popkov grumbled loudly while Valentina bathed his wounds, straightened his nose to the best of her ability, and bandaged what else she could, but he refused to remove anything more than his shirt.

“Don’t be stupid,” she scolded, “I’m a nurse. I’m used to-”

“You’re a girl.”

She smiled and let it rest. As she bound a long strip of bandage along the lash wounds on his broad back, she asked curiously, “Do you hate them now? The men who did this to you?”

“The Okhrana?” He spat on the floor. There was blood in it. “I’ve always hated the police. No different. Same with the murdering Bolsheviks.” He spat again.

“But Liev, if you hate both sides, who can you rely on, who can you believe in?”

He eyed her with surprise. “Myself, of course.”

“I should have known.” She laughed and felt her head spin off around the room. She waited for it to return, and when she’d finished with the bandage she picked up the bowl and stood beside the door, leaning against its frame. She’d left a pot of ointment on his bed. “Better?”

He grunted and downed another mouthful of vodka. She turned to leave.

“That man of yours, the engineer. He saved my…” Popkov stopped. The words stuck in his throat.

“I know,” she said gently. “I know. Jens Friis is glad you’re still alive.”

Popkov nodded his battered head. “He won’t be alive himself much longer if you don’t do something.”

She froze. “Tell me.”

“A duel.”

“No, it’s not true.”

“Word is everywhere. About you. About the fight. The blond bastard with the fluff on his face has a taste for blood. He killed two men in duels last year.”

“No, Liev. You’ve got it wrong. They agreed. They said they wouldn’t.”

Popkov slowly swung his head from side to side with disappointment. “I told you, you’re a girl. They fucking lied to you.”

VALENTINA COULD HEAR THE CLANKING OF THE METAL elevator not far away, and the sound of it made her skin crawl. This was the first time she had returned to Jens’s tunnel. She was wearing her nurse’s cape and pulled its navy folds closer around her to ward off the memories that the sound dragged in its wake.

She didn’t sit in the chair offered in Jens’s office but chose to stand. She took up her position beside the window and focused her aching eyes on the yard outside. It was full of activity, of workers in cloth caps scrambling up from belowground, blinking like moles in the sunlight. The women wore headscarves and pushed trucks of rubble along metal tracks. All were thin, all were colorless, all coated in a uniform dirt color. It was impossible to tell them apart. Is this what Jens looked out on every day? He wasn’t in the office when she arrived, so a runner had been sent to fetch him.

“Tea?” a clerk offered.

“No, thank you.”

The clerk returned to his sheaf of papers and Valentina to her waiting. Outside the sky was a pale wintry blue, and a solitary bird slid back and forth on slender wings, riding the air currents above the city. She heard Jens’s rapid footsteps before she saw him, and her pulse quickened. When he caught sight of her, he came to her side in two quick strides.

“Is something wrong?”

“Yes.”

He turned to the clerk and waved a dismissive hand, so that the man left the office without comment, his head swiveling to catch a stray word or two as he closed the door.

“What is it?”

He was leaning over her, full of concern. She stepped back and regarded him fiercely. “You lied to me.”

“About what?”

“The duel.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that.”

He moved over to his desk, a haven of order and neatness compared to the untidy paperwork on his clerk’s desk. He sat down and looked at her with a guarded expression that she wanted to scratch off his face. “What about it?”

“You’re going to fight?”

“Yes.”

“No, Jens, no. Don’t, you mustn’t. Do you hear me? Are you out of your mind? He’ll kill you. He’ll…”

She was determined not to cry, not to be a girl. She had promised herself. But the thought of losing him tore at her heart and her throat closed on the words, as though to utter them aloud would be to give them power to become real. She looked away from him and concentrated on the window, on a spider spinning its intricate web in the corner. Her hands were shaking, so she hid them under her cloak.

“Please, Jens. Don’t fight him. I want you alive.”

That sounded better. More controlled. He would listen to that. But the silence that stretched between them was as gloomy as his tunnels, and in that moment she knew she would not win. She swung around to face him and found him examining her from behind his desk as intently as if it were for the last time.

“Trust me,” he said in a low voice. He sounded tired.

“He might kill you.”

“Or I might kill him.”

“He killed two other men in duels last year.”

“I am not other men.”

“Jens, don’t. For me.” She kept her voice reasonable.

His mouth flickered with a hint of a smile. It startled her. It was so resigned.

“Why, Jens? Why do it? Just walk away.”

He shook his head.

“Chyort! Don’t,” she shouted as she slammed the flat of her hand down on his desk. “Don’t tell me it’s something men have to do, to fight for what is theirs, to set down their mark. Don’t tell me you’re that stupid. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you are as thick-skulled and eager for glory as all the rest of those mindless would-be heroes in their military peacock feathers. I thought you were different, I thought you were…”

She stopped. He had risen to his feet and walked around the desk. His hand seized her, dragging her to him, enveloping her in his long arms till her face was buried in the neck of his shirt. She couldn’t have spoken even if she’d wanted to.

“Listen to me, Valentina. I am not eager for glory, but I am eager to have a life with you here in Petersburg.” As each word came from his mouth, she could feel it hot on her hair. “Captain Chernov has challenged me. If I don’t accept the challenge I will be labeled a coward, and that will be the end of my life and my work in this city. I would be dropped from the sewage project, cold-shouldered by the tsar and his courtiers, rebuffed by all decent homes. I would be a leper. A pariah.” He lifted her face from his chest and kissed her pale forehead. “What kind of life would there be for us? No one would employ me.”

She clung to him. “We could run.”

“Run where?”

“To another city. To Moscow. Anywhere.”

“My reputation would follow me like a sick dog. Russia may be a vast country, my Valentina, but word spreads faster than the plague from city to city. Wherever I go, as an engineer my reputation is my lifeblood.”

“I’d rather have your lifeblood tainted than spilled on a forest floor.”

He said no more, just held her. “I’m not worth it,” she whispered at last.

“Who says so?”

“I do.”

“Then you don’t know what love is.”

She broke away from him and returned to the window. She didn’t want him to see any tears. “Have you ever killed a man before?” she asked, watching a child shoveling ice off the tracks outside.

“No.”

“Do you know how to handle a pistol?”

“Of course. Don’t worry, I’m a decent shot.”

“But he’s in the army. It’s what he does all day.”

“And chasing my woman. The bastard does that too.”

But she wouldn’t smile. “What kind of man has it in him to shoot another in cold blood?”

“None of us know”-she heard him step closer-“what we are capable of doing until we are faced with it. What about you, Valentina? What are you capable of?”

She swung around and found him standing right behind her, tall and unbending. “I love you, Jens Friis.” She touched his face, rested a hand on his heart. “So don’t underestimate what I am capable of.”