The Jewel of St Petersburg

Thirty-nine

STOP THE CAR!”

Valentina shouted the words to Jens as he steered the motorcar through the crush of traffic in St. Isaac’s Square. Rain was sheeting down, bounding off umbrellas and off the car’s roof, splashing in the gutters. Whenever it rained, Valentina noticed-even after more than five years of marriage-the way Jens’s quick eyes checked each drain they passed to ensure that it was clearing the water flow efficiently.

“Stop the car,” she said again. “Please.”

“What is it?”

They were driving back across the city, returning from a visit with Lydia to Valentina’s mother, but Jens had insisted they leave early because he did not want his wife and child on the roads after dark. She didn’t blame him. In February the daylight hours were short, and the mood of the city had grown ugly. It was bitterly cold, and nearly three years of war against Germany had brought terrible defeats and humiliation for Russia, with wounded soldiers pouring back home, unfed and uncared for, begging in the gutters. Public fury at the tsar had erupted not just in strikes this time but in barricades in the streets. Shops were destroyed, bricks were hurled through windows, and firebombs reduced businesses to rubble.

“Death to Capitalists” was the shout that echoed through the city.

Rationing was severe. There was a shortage of bread, no khleb to fill the empty bellies of the workers, no flour, no milk, no butter, no sugar. Queues formed outside bakeries and butcher shops from dawn to dusk in the bitter cold.

Valentina could feel the hatred in the air. Taste it like acid on her tongue. Eight million Russian soldiers killed, wounded or taken prisoner in the trenches, Tsarina Alexandra labeled a treacherous German whore by the masses, and Tsar Nicholas so out of touch that at this critical time he had left Petrograd to go to army headquarters. Petrograd. Even after three years, the new name for St. Petersburg still did not fit easily into Valentina’s mouth. It had been changed to avoid any contamination from the German-sounding word. Since the start of the war in 1914, anything and everything German was to be despised-including the tsar’s wife.

As soon as Jens stopped the car, Valentina jumped out and raced across the square, her coat plastered against her legs by the driving rain. She ran to the placati, the notice boards with newspapers and posters displayed for people to read. In this foul weather there was not the usual crowd huddled in front of them. That was why she’d seen it.

The flash of red. The scrap of scarf that Varenka had promised as a warning so long ago.

She had prepared herself for this moment-not yet, don’t let it be yet. Her hand reached out and she saw the rain spattering her glove, the wind snatching at torn posters that screamed POWER TO THE PEOPLE, and four crows hunched like black heathens on the cathedral dome behind. The strip of red material was nailed to the notice board, sodden and ragged, but it was there. Waiting for her to see it. She wrenched it off the board.

MAMA, YOU’RE ALL WET.”

As Valentina slid back into the car, Lydia’s small hands patted at her cheeks, wiping away the raindrops.

“What was that about?” Jens asked.

“It’s Varenka’s.” She held up the red piece of cloth. It dripped onto her lap.

Jens slowly shook his head. “After five years of nothing from her.”

“Jens, it’s a warning. She promised it as a sign of when the revolution was close. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember.” He stared grimly ahead through the windshield at the blurred figures scurrying through the rain. “Dear God, now the bloodletting will begin.”

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” JENS ASKED.

Valentina looked up from her sewing and smiled. He was on his knees on the floor, building a railway station out of wooden blocks with Lydia. At four years old her young face would crease with concentration as she balanced one on top of another, careful to imitate her father’s technique. She was wearing a navy velvet dress with lace collar and cuffs, but she had pushed up the cuffs and tucked her skirt into her underwear to stop it from getting in her way as she worked. Valentina sighed indulgently. Her flame-haired daughter wasn’t turning out quite as she expected. Tawny eyes that missed nothing and a determined preference for playing with model trains with her father instead of the magnificent dollhouse Valentina had bought for her last birthday.

“Valentina”-Jens sat back on his haunches and studied her with a lift of one eyebrow-“the maid does our sewing. What are you doing?”

Her needle froze midstitch. She lowered her voice. “Getting ready.”

She slid a golden rouble from her pocket and pressed it into the section of hemline that she had opened up in the plain brown dress that was sprawled over her knees.

His eyes lifted from the stitching to her face. She saw his throat swallow. “My dearest Valentina, have we really come to that?”

“Yes. I believe we have.”

Lydia laughed, crowing with delight as she abandoned her bricks. “Can I play too, Mama?”

LENIN WAS COMING BACK. THE GLORIOUS VLADIMIR ILYICH Lenin was at last returning from his enforced exile in Switzerland. Arkin recognized the moment for what it was: the end of the Romanovs.

After five hundred years of tyranny, they were finished. Now that the people would have a figurehead to rally behind, nothing and nobody would stop them. Not the tsar. Not his troops. Not his pathetic attempts at silencing the outcry of the proletariat by dismissing the Duma. The air spat fury. The streets of Petrograd were on fire. Not just the shops and the capitalist businesses, but the ground beneath the feet of Russians. It was burning. Scorching away the old ways, ridding Russia of injustice and fear.

Arkin lit a cigarette, inhaled as he flexed and unflexed his damaged knee, and looked around his office. It was small, but it was all he required. Posters on the walls: WORKERS UNITE! and VICTORY TO THE PEOPLE! A huge image of a clenched fist and of a peasant stamping on the Romanovs’ double-headed eagle. A desk, a telephone, a cabinet, a typewriter. And stacks of rectangular white cards. Hundreds of them. He kept names on cards, names and details.

On top of the pile in front of him was one name: JENS FRIIS-DANISH ENGINEER. He picked it up between two fingers and struck a match on the leg of his desk. The flame flared. He held it under the card and watched it eat it up as the card curled and crackled and died. He dropped it into the metal bin at his feet.

Very soon. He allowed himself a smile as the flames consumed the final remnants of the card. Very soon. Jens Friis would not exist.

IN THE STABLE JENS WAS BRUSHING DOWN HIS HORSE, HERO, with quick angry movements. He’d just heard that General Krymov had arrived back from the front in the war against Germany. He’d brought tales of thousands dead and a woefully underequipped Russian army. Soldiers were perishing of cold and starvation, and those still alive were marching in boots held together with string, feet rotting in the trenches. Insufficient ammunition. Toxic gases blinding their eyes. No food. No blankets. With no faith in their commanders, despair and misery were making men desert in the thousands.

“Who can blame them?” he muttered, and just then heard a carriage draw up outside his house.

“Your countess for you,” Liev Popkov called out with a grin on his face.

“She’s not my countess, ox-brain.”

The big Cossack liked to turn up in the stables sometimes and took acute pleasure whenever he could in goading Jens into losing his temper. The day Valentina moved out of the Ivanov household and became Jens’s wife, Popkov had departed as well. No one knew quite where he lived now, or how, but in the last few years he’d grown a dense black beard and seemed to relish his newfound freedom. When Valentina was busy in the evening practicing a new piano piece for one of her concerts, she liked to be alone to concentrate, so Jens would wander out to check on Hero and smoke a cigarette under the stars. More often than not Popkov would be out there with a pack of cards and a bottle of vodka.

Only once did they come to blows, and that was over Valentina. It happened late last year just before Christmas, the night that Rasputin was murdered and thrown into the river. Popkov had wanted to tell her that he’d heard that Viktor Arkin had turned up again in Petrograd. Jens had told him no. On no account must he tell her. They’d argued. In the end Jens had used the only language that seemed to register in Popkov’s stubborn brain and knocked him to the ground. Fists had flown.

“What on earth happened to you?” Valentina asked in alarm when he eventually stormed back into the house.

“Popkov happened to me,” he had growled.

She’d laughed uproariously and shown absolutely no sympathy while she bathed his cuts. “You’ll probably catch rabies from him,” she’d teased.

But right now he was in no mood for a visit from Countess Serova. She had never come to his house before, so why now? He gave Hero a bucket of fresh water, and when he looked up he was surprised to see not the countess, but young Alexei, her son, standing awkwardly in the entrance to the stable.

“Alexei! Dobroye utro, good morning. Come on in. Is your mother here?”

The boy came forward eagerly. Hero lifted his head and whickered a soft greeting. The boy had grown tall; his limbs were lanky and at that stage where they are not quite under control yet. Twelve years old and with a clear direct way of examining the world from those quiet green eyes of his.

“She’s in the carriage. Uncle Jens, I’ve come to say good-bye. We’re leaving Petrograd, Mama and I, and I wanted to see you.” He shrugged self-consciously.

“Leaving Petrograd?”

“Mama says it’s not safe here.”

“Where are you going?”

“Paris.”

Jens didn’t want to lose the boy. He placed a hand on the young shoulder, felt the tension in it. “I’ll miss you, Alexei. I’ll miss our rides in the forest.”

The boy nodded, a quick unhappy gesture. “I don’t want to go.”

“Your mother is right. It’s not safe here.”

“What about you? You’re not leaving.”

Jens smiled. “The socialists won’t be interested in me. I’m Danish, so don’t worry, I’m not in any danger.”

Alexei fixed his eyes on Jens. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” Jens lied.

The boy looked relieved.

“Anyway,” Jens added, “I have to stay to look after Attila’s sons.” Two of the white mouse’s offspring still roamed the mouse palace for Lydia’s amusement.

Alexei shuffled his feet.

“What is it?” Jens asked gently.

“I’ve brought you this.” The boy held out a brown paper bag.

Jens took it and let out a low whistle of surprise. Inside lay a diamond bracelet and a pair of gold earrings. “I’m not sure they’ll suit me,” he said.

“No.” Alexei’s cheeks were scarlet. “They are not for you to-” Then he saw Jens’s teasing expression and laughed. He looked quickly around the stable, checking for eavesdroppers, but no one was there. Popkov had disappeared. “Mama has taken all her jewelry out of the safe and is packing it, scattered throughout her clothes and even inside her pots of face cream.”

“Really?”

“Yes. She says they’ll try to steal it.”

“Your mama is probably right.”

“She left out these because she had so many and says these are almost worthless.” He stared at the paper bag. “They don’t look worthless to me.”

“No, Alexei, you’re right. But your mama has jewels of such value, these mean little to her, I expect.”

“So I want you to take them. Hide them. In case you…” He shrugged his bony shoulders again.

“Thank you, Alexei.” Jens was touched and hugged the boy close. “I’ll miss you very much.” He stood back and held him at arm’s length, impressed by the quiet dignity of his young mind. “Make sure you keep riding, won’t you?”

“Yes.” The boy blinked hard. “Thank you, Uncle Jens, for…”

Jens ruffled his hair. “Go and say good-bye to Hero while I have a word with your mother.” Briskly Jens walked out to the carriage. She was sitting inside, dressed in green, her eyes sad and solemn. “So you are leaving Russia?”

“Yes.”

“For Paris.”

She smiled at him and shook her head. “That’s what I’m telling people. But actually we’re heading east.”

“That’s a long journey.”

“But far safer than trying to skirt around the war front in the west.”

“Nowhere is safe now. Take care.”

She put out her hand and fingered his where it rested on the carriage door. “Listen to me, Jens. I’ve heard there is a plot among the aristocracy to oust Tsar Nicholas.”

“Good God, have they come to their senses at last?”

“No. Six of the grand dukes have gotten together with Prince Georgi Lvov from the Duma to offer the throne to Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich instead.”

“To swap one Romanov for another! They are insane. Prime Minister Golitsyn is far too weak to keep order for them. Can’t they see it’s too late?”

“No, Jens, they love their country. They don’t want to give it up, and they know they would have to leave immediately if the Romanovs lose the throne.”

“You love Russia too, but it’s not stopping you from going.”

Her gaze swept away from him, focusing on the stables at the side of the house where Alexei had just emerged, sprinting toward them. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “His father is a Romanov. If ever it came out, Alexei would be in extreme danger.” She shivered. “That’s why we’re leaving.”

Jens turned, seized the boy’s arm, and hurried him into the carriage. He slammed the door. “Go quickly,” he urged. “Go today.”

“Tomorrow,” she murmured.

“I shall come to say good-bye in the morning,” Jens promised.

The boy smiled at him. “We could go for one last ride.”

THAT DAY WAS THE START OF THE END. VALENTINA WOKE early, uneasy, too restless to sleep. She could hear the city even in their quiet leafy avenue, breathing hard. Her bones ached with tension, as if she had been running too fast and too far. There were stories everywhere of workers turning on their bosses, of postal workers who had beaten to death the man they had obeyed for ten years, a couple who ran a jeweler’s shop thrown out of it by their employees. She was frightened for Jens. She had visions of workers underground rising up like blind moles from their tunnels and savaging their Direktor in his flimsy office.

Instinctively her hand stroked him beside her to ensure itself he was whole and safe, and immediately he pulled her on top of him. She made love to him fiercely, leaving her mark on him, small nips to his chest and the taste of blood in her mouth where she nicked his lower lip with her teeth. Today she needed more of him, more than just his muscles and his skin and the thrust of him hard inside her. She needed the blood from his veins. She needed the beat of his heart. And when finally she lay exhausted in his arms, he lifted himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.

“You seem hungry this morning,” he laughed.

She sat up, tucking her knees under her. “Don’t go in to work, Jens. Not today.”

“Why not today?”

“I have a bad feeling about it. Stay home today.”

“I have to, my love. I must say good-bye to Alexei. And there are big problems at the moment.”

Her heart clattered in her chest. “With the workers?”

“No, though it’s true the unions are shouting their demands in my ear. No, it’s the old wooden water pipes. They are rotting. The water is contaminated in places and typhoid has broken out again. I’ve announced that people must stop drinking it. But what else can they do?” He swung his legs from the bed, his mind already on the day ahead.

She had lost her chance.

JENS DIDN’T RIDE WITH ALEXEI. THOUGH IT WAS STILL EARLY by the time he reached the Serov mansion, the countess’s carriage was standing packed and ready outside the door, and Alexei was slumped on the front step. He leapt to his feet at the sight of Jens on Hero, but their farewell was brief.

The countess was irritated. “He wouldn’t get into the carriage until he had said good-bye to you.”

Jens shook hands with the boy, a formal recognition that he was an adult now. “Look after your mother, won’t you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Write to me. Tell me what you decide to do with your life.”

“I’ve already decided. I’m going into the army.”

Jens’s heart sank. “You’re still young yet. Good luck in your new life. We’ll meet again, I’m certain, when all this mess is over.”

The boy held back his tears. “I’d like that.”

Jens hugged him close, kissed his mother’s cheek, and promised to see that Alexei’s horse went to a good home. Then they were gone in the black carriage with its golden crest removed from the door. Jens watched it until it was out of sight and could not suppress his anger at a nation that drives its fine young men from its soil. He felt the loss of Alexei keenly and swung up into his saddle, urging Hero into a brisk canter down the gravel drive. An ugly mean-eyed horse was waiting outside the gates and on its back sat Popkov, scratching his beard like a lazy bear.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Jens demanded.

“Your wife sent me.”

“Why?”

“To keep you safe.” He grimaced sourly.

“To hell with you.” Jens kicked his horse into a gallop.

EIGHTY THOUSAND WORKERS DOWNED TOOLS AND CAME out on strike that day in Petrograd. There were riots on Vasilievsky Island and violent marches that barged their way through the city’s streets. Plumes of smoke rose like fingers of hatred across the skyline, as trains and transport and production lines were paralyzed. Shops and factories boarded up their doors and windows as their workers took to the streets with banners. Jens rode through the heart of Petrograd, and he could smell it. The animosity and the anarchy, the desire to destroy. To burn. To break. To tear down and to rip apart.

Motorcars lay on their sides, fenders and windshields smashed; shop doors hung on broken hinges, and goods were flung into gutters, where they were scavenged. Crates of vodka stolen from liquor stores fueled the tempers of the marchers; the men with red armbands and bloodshot eyes clutched at Hero’s reins and tried in vain to unseat its rider. Jens experienced an overwhelming sense of sadness. This was the country he loved, and it was slicing open its own veins until its lifeblood made the streets slick and slimy with grief. A thousand or so wealthy families had held this vast country in the palm of their hands for hundreds of years, but they had squeezed it dry. Now the whole of Russia would pay the price.

Jens rode toward his office, dismayed as he passed factory after factory being ransacked. It would not take much for a group of his workers to bring a tunnel roof crashing down. Workforces were running riot everywhere, destroying machinery and stripping glass from windows. And as he rode, all the time he heard the sound of Popkov’s horse behind him.

“Go home,” Jens shouted.

But the horse remained like a flat-footed shadow. When he turned into Lizhkovskaya Ulitsa, the street was crowded with men wearing red ribbons on their chests and carrying iron bars in their fists. It was the Raspov foundry, its strikers pouring down the road, shouting “Fight for justice” and “Death to the Oppressors.” Beneath him Hero edged sideways, unnerved by the smell of hatred in the narrow street. Jens patted the animal’s neck, felt the oily sweat on it, and started to swing him back the way they had come. But at that moment the screams started.

A splash of scarlet capes and the gleam of sabers flashed as they sliced through the air. There was the whinny of horses and clatter of hooves. Jens felt a sense of doom, black and suffocating. The troops had been sent in. So the tsar had decided not to negotiate. There was the sound of shots. Panic and fear took hold as the street burst into motion, people trying to flee from the sabers but finding no space. Jens saw a young boy stumble and disappear under trampling feet. He forced Hero forward, barging a path with the horse’s broad chest, and opened a bubble of air for the boy to regain his feet.

He heard Popkov’s bellow of warning behind him and spun around. He ducked just in time to miss the sword aimed at his head as the Hussars on their mounts were slicing their way through the crowd, crimson staining their blades. Jens saw Popkov cornered against a wall, still on his horse but his arm drenched in blood, and a blond captain was raising his saber to strike a second time. The captain was Chernov. Jens kicked Hero into a leap forward, scattering strikers left and right as he dragged the horse’s head to the side at the last moment, slamming it into Chernov’s black stallion. The arc of the blade shifted. Just enough. Instead of striking Popkov across the throat, it sliced across his face with a force that should have ripped his head from his body.

Jens’s pulse was singing in his ears, and he sent his fist crashing into the captain’s chest, snapping ribs and toppling him from his saddle. Popkov had sagged forward, blood pumping down his horse’s neck, but Jens steadied the weight of him in the saddle with one hand and seized the loose reins in the other. His own horse needed no urging. Using the animal’s strength, Jens shouldered a path through the strikers who were trying to stand and fight. Iron bars against sabers and rifles was no equal contest, but they had numbers on their side. More and more saddles fell empty.

In a side street Jens dismounted quickly and touched Popkov’s shoulder. It shuddered. Still alive, thank God. Carefully he raised the Cossack’s head from the horse. Jesus Christ, it was a bloody mass of gore. Rage and sorrow ripped a hole in his own chest, and yet his hands were steady as he removed his scarf and bound it tightly around Popkov’s head, leaving just one good eye free. That eye, narrow and black, fought to focus, and the bulk of Popkov’s massive body swayed unsteadily on the horse’s back. He was barely conscious.

“Hold on, Popkov,” Jens said firmly. “I’ll get you home.”

He unlooped his belt and tied the Cossack’s wrists around the horse’s neck, then leapt up into Hero’s saddle with Popkov’s reins in his hands.

“Still getting in my way, Friis.”

Jens looked ahead. A man with a hard face and dressed in a long coat was standing in the middle of the road, rifle in hand, a small army of men behind him. All wore red armbands.

“Get out of my path, Arkin.” Jens had no time to argue with the bastard. He started to ride forward, leading Popkov’s horse behind.

Suddenly rifle shots sounded like thunder in the narrow street. It was the only sound Jens heard. No whinny. No squeal of pain. Hero just juddered, then collapsed under him in silence. Front legs first and then, after a brief struggle, the hindquarters.

“No, no, no!” Jens roared as he jumped from the saddle before it hit the ground and knelt at his horse’s head. He held the long nose in the crook of his arm but the dark eyes were already dull, the breath gone from the wide velvet nostrils. “No,” Jens bellowed, leapt from his knees, and threw himself at Arkin.

“I’ve been looking forward to this moment,” Arkin said with an odd twist of his mouth as he slammed his rifle butt against Jens’s head.