The Jewel of St Petersburg

Two

NYET! NO! THE WORD FILLED VALENTINA’S MIND, ECHOING inside it till there was no room for other words. Nyet! No room for words like blood and pain. No room for death.

Their horses skidded to a halt on the gravel in front of the house and Valentina threw herself out of the saddle. There was noise everywhere. People frantic, servants running, shouting, crying. Panic leaping from face to face; the air was thick and heavy with it. There was the stink of smoke, shattered glass underfoot. Riderless horses hurtled into view from the stables, skittering in terror. She heard the word bomb repeated again and again.

“Papa!” she screamed.

Her father’s study was at that end where the smoke was pouring out, swallowing the house in greedy gulps. Each morning when at Tesovo, her father would go into his study to write his ministerial letters immediately after finishing his newspaper over breakfast. Her heart lurched as she started to fly toward the crumpled wing of the building, but after only two steps she was jerked to a stop. A fist like an anchor chain had seized her wrist.

“Liev,” she screamed, “let go of me!”

“Nyet.”

“I have to see if Papa is-”

“Nyet. It’s not safe.”

His filthy fingernails dug deep into her white skin while in his other hand lay the reins of the two horses. Dasha was prancing wildly, nostrils flared, but the ugly one just stood flat-footed, its curious brown eyes fixed on Popkov.

She stopped struggling and drew herself up to her full height. “I order you to release me, Liev Popkov.”

He looked down at her imperious figure. “Or what? You’ll have me whipped?”

At that moment Valentina caught sight of her father’s back-she recognized his navy frock coat-stumbling into the dense pall of rubble dust.

“Papa!” she yelled again.

But before she could make Popkov release her, the blackened form of a man emerged from the smoke, choking for air. In his arms lay what looked like a broken figure. He was cradling it, his head bent over the boneless body, its sooty legs dangling limp and unheeding. The man was bellowing something, but for some reason Valentina’s ears weren’t working. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. The man drew closer and with a shock she realized it was her father, but her father with a cocoon of black dust encasing his skin, his whiskers, his clothes.

“Papa!” she screamed.

This time the Cossack let her go. As she scrabbled to her father’s side, her eyes took in one of the figure’s feet. It was wearing a single red shoe, one she herself had helped her sister choose in the shop on Nevsky. The rest was blackened like Papa: her legs, her dress, her face, even her hair, except for one stray strand on the side of her head that was still blond. But streaked with scarlet.

“Katya…”

Valentina tried to shout the name, to make her sister open her blue eyes, to sit up and laugh at the game she was playing. But the word had no life. It died on her lips.

“Katya…”

Her father was bellowing at the servants. “Ride for the doctor! For God’s sake, bring him here at once. I don’t care what he’s…”

His voice thickened and seemed to splinter. Valentina stood at his side, her face frozen, but when she reached out to touch the broken doll, her father swung his arms away.

“Don’t touch her.”

“But I-”

“Don’t touch her. You did this to her.”

“No, Papa, I rode up to-”

“You should have taken her with you. She was looking for you, waiting for you. It’s because of you she’s hurt. You-”

“No,” Valentina whispered.

“Yes. I was still in the breakfast room, but she was fretting because you’d gone off riding without her. She must have wandered into my study where…” His mouth collapsed into a low cry. “I’ll have the murdering savages shot, I swear to God I will.”

“Katya…”

The blond-black head moved. The red shoe started to judder and shake, and a strange unearthly sound rose in a thin thread from the lacerated throat. Grasping his child tighter to his chest, crooning her name, her father hurried to the wide steps up to the front door, Valentina at his heels. As he stepped over the threshold he snapped his head around to look at her. What she saw in his eyes made her halt.

“Get out, Valentina. Get out of here. As horses mean so much more to you than your sister, go and help catch them.”

His eyes almost closed and for a moment he swayed unsteadily. With his foot he kicked the door shut in her face.

VALENTINA STOOD THERE AND ROCKED BACK ON HER HEELS, staring at the door. At the iron studs in it, at the place where she and Katya had nicked its surface with a stone to show how deep the snow had risen last Christmas.

“Katya,” she moaned.

Where was Mama? Gathering hot water and bandages?

An earsplitting squeal behind her made her swing around. Horses were charging about the drive in panic, tossing their heads, kicking their heels. Who had let them out? Flecks of foam littered their mouths and flanks. What had happened in the stables? Had the revolutionaries been there too? The grooms and stable boys were pursuing the frightened animals, coaxing and calling, but there was no sign of the stable master, Simeon Popkov, a powerful man who knew how to take control and steady nerves. He was nowhere to be seen.

Where was he? And where was Liev?

She abandoned the steps and flew around the side of the house toward the stables. Had he already caught the men who had done this terrible thing to Katya? Surely Papa would forgive her selfishness if she brought him one of the revolutionaries responsible.

“Simeon!” she shouted as she raced into the stable yard.

Abruptly she stopped, lungs pumping. The yard was quiet and oddly empty. Only Dasha and the ugly mount that was Liev’s were tethered to an iron ring in the wall. They were jumpy, edging in circles, bumping into each other. At the far end of the yard beyond the stalls stood the shack that was the stable master’s office, its door hanging open. In the dim interior she could make out a broad male figure, his back toward her. He was kneeling on the ground, his black head bowed.

“Simeon,” she called out. She could hear the fear in her voice.

But even as the word left her mouth she realized her mistake. It wasn’t the stable master; it was his son, Liev, huddled over something on the floor. She burst into the shack.

“Liev, where is…?”

His father, Simeon Popkov, was there in front of her. The stable master was lying stretched out on his back on the ground, limbs askew, black eyes open. His throat had been cut to the bone. She’d never have believed there could be so much blood. Crimson seemed to flood her world. It had taken over his tunic, soaked his hair, laid claim to the floor. Specks of scarlet floated in the air, and the smell of it made her choke.

Her mind grew hazy. She blinked, as if her eyelids could sweep away what lay before her, blinked again and this time focused on the Cossack’s son. Tears were coursing down his cheeks and his hand was holding his father’s, wrapping the strong fingers in a grip that would cheat death if it could. She put a hand on the young man’s back, feeling the tremors under his shirt.

“Liev,” she whispered gently. She touched his hair, the black wiry curls, wanting to draw out the splinters of pain but not knowing how. “I’m so sorry. He was a good man. Why would they harm him as well?”

Liev raised his head and gazed bleakly at the splashes of crimson on the wooden walls. Words roared out of him. “My father was nothing to them. Nothing! They did it just to prove they could, to show their power. And to give warning to those who work for other families of your class.”

She stood there for a long moment, her chest too tight to breathe, seeing in her head the broken figure ofKatya, reliving the expression in her father’s eyes. Listening to the pain in the guttural moans that shuddered out of the Cossack’s throat. Her hand lay on his shoulder in an attempt to offer comfort, though she knew that comfort was the last thing either of them wanted. A thrashing tide of anger was rising within her.

“Liev,” she declared, “they will pay for this.”

He lifted his dark eyes to hers. “I’ll not rest,” he growled, “and I’ll not forget. Not till they’re dead.”

Her gaze slid to the dead body of Simeon, who had been the first to lift her up onto a horse’s back when she was scarcely three years old and the first to pick her up from the dirt each time she fell off. He would dust her down, tease her with his huge laugh, and throw her straight back on again.

“I’ll not forget,” she echoed. “Nor forgive.”

THE HOUSE LAY SILENT, THE ROOMS DARKENED. EVERYONE moved on tiptoe and spoke in low whispers, the way they would around the dead. Valentina wanted to throw open the curtains and shout, She’s still alive! But she kept quiet, ignoring the ache that crippled her chest, and sat close beside her mother on the chaise longue in the drawing room.

They were past words. Locked inside themselves, waiting for the doctor’s heavy tread to descend the stairs. The room was hot, the sun straining to creep between the curtains, but Valentina remained cold deep in the center of her bones. Her eyes followed her mother’s delicate fingers, watched them crouch in the lap of her lavender morning gown, hooked around each other, twisting and digging, tugging at the lace cuff on her sleeve, while the rest of her slight figure sat quiet. It upset Valentina more than the expression of despair on her mother’s face or the two fierce bursts of color on the white skin of her cheeks. Elizaveta Ivanova was a person who believed in restraint at all times. To see her hands so out of control made the world feel unsafe.

“How much longer?” Valentina murmured.

“The doctor has been up there too long. It’s a bad sign.”

“No, it means he’s still helping her. He hasn’t given up.” She tried to smile. “You know how stubborn Katya is.”

Elizaveta Ivanova gave one dry harsh sob, then silenced herself. She had been brought up as part of that breed of women who regarded a wife’s role in life as being a decorative and largely voiceless adornment to her husband, to look attractive and well mannered on his arm at all times, and to produce children for him, one of whom was expected to be a boy to continue the bloodline. In this latter area she had failed. She had given birth to two healthy girls but seemed unable to forgive herself the lack of a son, viewing it as a punishment from God for some unknown mortal sin. Now this curse on her younger daughter.

Despite her mother’s daily routine of social engagements, Valentina sometimes thought her lonely. She slipped an arm around her in a rare gesture of physical contact between them and was astonished by the warmth of her body. Her own skin was chill as marble. Even now her mother’s luxuriant golden hair was elegantly dressed on top of her head and she sat rigidly upright inside her armor of French silk and lace, of amethyst brooch and whalebone stays. It occurred to Valentina for the first time that maybe her mother already knew how dangerous a place the world was, and that was why she never relaxed. Security police were scouring the fields and forest, but so far had found no men with rifles.

“Mama,” she whispered softly, “if the revolutionaries hadn’t kept me in the forest, I’d have been back here long before Katya woke, she’d have been with me down at the creek instead of wandering into Papa’s…”

Elizaveta Ivanova turned her head to inspect her daughter, her nostrils flared, her eyes almost colorless as if their usual deep blue pigment had been washed away by hidden tears. “You are not to blame, Valentina.” She held her daughter’s hand in hers.

“Papa thinks I am.”

“Your father is angry. He needs someone to blame.”

“He could blame the hooded men in the forest.”

“Ah.” Elizaveta Ivanova released a long sad sigh. “That would be too easy. Be patient with him, my dear. He has more on his mind than you know.”

Valentina shuddered. Nothing, she was certain, would be easy from now on.

THE BEDROOM WAS STIFLING. WHAT WERE THEY TRYING to do to her sister? Suffocate her? A fire burned in the grate although it was a hot summer’s day, the curtains were drawn shut, and a dim light cast shadows that to Valentina felt like secretive figures hiding in the gloom. She had been allowed five minutes, that was all, and only because she had pleaded so hard. Immediately she knelt beside the bed, rested her arms on the embroidered silk counterpane, and balanced her chin on her hand, so that her eyes were level with her sister’s.

“Katya,” she whispered. “Katya, I’m sorry.”

The face on the pillow tugged at her heart. It was Katya as she would be in fifty years’ time, her skin and her hair gray and lifeless, her lips thin, drawn into a tight line of pain. Valentina gently kissed her cheek and smelled the dirt on her. Once when she was young, one of the gardeners had dug out a rats’ nest from under a shed, and she and Katya had watched wide-eyed when the small furry bodies squealed as they fought to escape. They had given off a rank musky odor that had stuck in Valentina’s nostrils. That was what Katya’s skin smelled of now.

She didn’t know if Katya was awake. Conscious or unconscious. They said the doctor had given her something. What did that mean? Morphine? How could her precious blond sister who was always bursting with laughter and energy be hiding under this little old lady’s skin? Tentatively Valentina touched the dusty arm that lay outside the cover, and it felt like a stranger’s, gritty and rough. Where were the satin-smooth limbs that loved to swim in the creek and pull down branches from the willows to build silvery dens to hide in?

A large tear splashed down onto her sister’s arm and startled Valentina. She didn’t know she was crying. She rested her cheek against her sister’s hot arm, and it felt like a furnace under her skin.

“I, Valentina Ivanova, caused this,” she murmured under her breath, so that her ears as well as her mind would bear witness to the words. She scraped away her tears and said loudly, “Katya, it’s me, Valentina.”

No response.

She kissed her sister’s filthy hair. “Can you hear me?”

No response.

“Please, Katya.”

A gray-gold eyelash fluttered.

“Katya!”

A slit of blue showed in one eye.

Valentina leaned closer. “Hello, privet, my sweet.”

The slit widened a fraction. Katya’s lips moved, but no sound emerged.

Valentina placed her ear to her sister’s lips and felt a faint whisper of breath. “What is it? Are you in pain? The doctor has…”

“I’m frightened.”

Valentina’s throat closed. She kissed the soft cheek. “Don’t be frightened, Katya. I’m here. I’ll look after you and keep you safe. For the rest of our lives.” She squeezed her sister’s small hand and saw a slight movement at the side of her tight bruised mouth. A smile.

“Promise me,” Katya breathed.

“I promise. On my life.”

Slowly Katya’s eyes fell shut and the narrow slit of blue vanished. But the edge of the smile stayed, and Valentina cradled her limp hand until they came and made her leave.