by Will Thomas
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I’m not a great believer in the aristocracy. It seems rather arbitrary. Why should one fellow sell potatoes on a street corner in Whitechapel while another wastes his days in a castle because his great-grandfather played cards and wenched with King Henry VIII? It doesn’t seem to be a matter of breeding. I’ve seen the most noble faces on young women in Poplar and I’ve seen countesses that looked like—well, I shall be gentlemanly. Let us say they did not present physical traits someone would appreciate three generations hence.
One could build a case that I’m envious. The old Llewelyn line strutted around Wales for a few hundred years, giving themselves airs. The problem was I arrived several centuries too late.
“I feel ridiculous,” I told Barker, raising my domino mask up over my forehead.
“You look ridiculous,” he replied. “But then, Nicholas did not arrange this ball for our benefit.”
“He did not arrange it at all. He merely snapped his fingers and here we are. It was arranged for him.”
“Semantics, Mr. Llewelyn. Keep your eye on the crowd.”
“To what end, sir? Everyone is wearing a mask. Should there be an attempt on Nicholas’s life, what do I say? ‘Arrest that peacock’? ‘Detain the second half of that donkey’?”
Very well, my speech tends toward hyperbole. Most men wore evening kit, as we did, with some sort of mask. Every phylum of animal was represented, and a like number of gods and mythical creatures. The men looked uncomfortable even while their identities were shielded. That morning they argued in the House of Lords. This evening, they were posing as a giraffe.
The women’s outfits were historical fantasies going back to ancient Egypt. Cleopatra was neither as lithe nor as young as she appeared in art, and as for Helen of Troy: her face was more likely to stop a clock than launch a ship. However, the women appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely. Someone whispered that the more esteemed costume shops had been picked as clean as a Christmas goose in an orphanage.
I’d have worn something more elaborate than a Harlequin mask, but my purpose there was not to draw attention to myself and to search for any danger to the tsarevich. Scotland Yard was in evidence and were even more conspicuous than we were. Some guests assumed the bobby uniforms were some rich wag’s idea of a joke. So far, a sword had been taken from a gladiator, and Dick Turpin had his flintlock pistol confiscated.
“Do you believe there will be an attempt on his life tonight?” I asked the Guv.
“Who can say? But if it happens and we were not here, or worse yet, unable to stop an attempt, what good are we?”
“We’ll get on, or we won’t,” I said. My partner has said that to me on more than one occasion.
“That’s the spirit, lad.”
Barker wore spectacles in a deep green that gave him an insect-like appearance, a mantis in an evening suit. However, they were merely spectacles and no one could say that he was attempting to represent any particular subject. But then, if anyone expected him to come dressed as a penguin or Genghis Khan, they did not know Cyrus Barker.
“What sort of family has a ballroom in their home?” I asked. “The entire street I was rose in could fit in this one room.”
“I’m certain Her Majesty’s government will have something to say about the expense, as well,” Barker murmured. “The costumes cost more than you realize. I believe the jeweled necklace about Anne Boleyn’s throat there is genuine.”
The mansion was immense and I shuddered to imagine the price of land hard by the Regent’s Park. There was an enormous staircase that the guests ascended to be viewed in their elaborate ensembles. The walls were decked out in gold, which continued the echo of another time. An octet played selections from Schumann and Chopin. The orchestra wore breeches and powdered wigs. I wondered how much they were paid to play here. In fact, I wondered how much everything cost altogether, in the thousands of pounds, perhaps, all to satisfy the whim of a bored young royal.
Barker was wealthy, true, but he didn’t spend it ostentatiously. In fact, much of his income went to supporting charities such as the Sailors’ Home and General Booth’s Salvation Army. He was not especially frugal, as was the reputation of Scotsmen. If he bought a pair of boots, they came from Maxwell’s, the best bootmaker in London. Nothing was ever threadbare. If anything was deemed unsatisfactory by Mac, he would order whatever was needed at a shop that had the Guv’s size on record. Goodness knows where he found the spectacles.
I wondered if there was anyone present to keep the young tsarevich in check. I did not see the Okhrana, for example. He was taking a risk being here in a room full of masked people. I’m not saying anything derogatory about Scotland Yard. They are second to none, but if a person wants to hide a pistol badly enough, a way shall be found. Murder will out.
They entered then, the four of them: Nicholas, Prince George, Prince George of Greece and Denmark, and Grand Duke Sergei. The tsarevich was dressed as d’Artagnan, and the royals were the Three Musketeers. Before I even had time to take it all in, Barker groaned beside me.
“What is it?” I asked over the music.
“Prince George’s costume is nearly identical to Nicholas’s,” he said. “We shall have to protect two men, not one.”
“Do we risk separating?”
“It is not, strictly speaking, our duty to protect the tsarevich, as it is to stop the man who shall attempt to kill him.”
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to a man dressed in cardinal’s robes with a red mask that had whiskers attached to it. Was it Richelieu? Did he know ahead of time that Nicholas and his cronies—if I may call His Highness a crony—had chosen Musketeer costumes?
The waltzes gave way to the formal dances, which always remind me of a chapter from Jane Austen: two rows of people, separated by gender, facing each other, ready for a musical cue. One row contained baboons, tigers, gods, and ogres, stuffed into their near-identical evening kit. The other looked like a Covent Garden Market on Sunday morning, pastel dresses looking like bouquets of flowers in every color imaginable. Fairy-tale heroines. Bo Peep and Red Riding Hood.
I came closer, skirting the dancers, looking from face to face. Then I felt a hand on my elbow and turned, ready to defend myself, but as it turned out, they were one man short and needed another gentleman in the dance. I attempted to protest, but it was too late. I was drawn in and squared off against my partner in the dance, an older woman impersonating Elizabeth I. I joined in. Step forward, step back, bow. Step forward, circle around your partner, and step back again. I held the little woman’s fingers overhead and she made a small hop and turned about. We changed partners for a moment then returned again. We took each other’s hands and lifted them so that other couples could dance between us. When we came through ourselves, we changed partners.
My new partner wore a historical French dress of the last century, with a bosom compressed by a tall corset. Her dress was sumptuous, her hair in elegant ringlets, and her eyes covered with a mask of red lace. She was either a fictional or historical figure and I knew I should realize which one. Then it came to me. She was Milady de Winter, Cardinal Richelieu’s spy, the one who seduced d’Artagnan. As it came to me, she smacked me between the eyes with the tip of her fan.
“Vous petit cur,” she whispered. “You lied from start to finish. Sergei tells me you are nothing but a filthy detective sent to spy on us.”
All this while we were dancing forward, backward, circling, separating, and coming together again.
“Guilty as charged, I must confess, mademoiselle,” I murmured to Mathilde Kschessinska, “though it broke my heart to do it.”
“I should shoot you.”
“You would only draw attention to yourself, and that is no way to sneak off with the tsarevich. That is your plan, I take it? An hour or two alone with Nicholas?”
“Nikolai belongs to me, my pet. He’ll never marry that scrawny German woman your queen is throwing his way. No, he is mine! I will be ts
arina, and I won’t be stopped by a contemptible beast like you!”
There we were, arm in arm, dancing along between two rows of people, and she was spitting at me like an angry house cat.
“I fear you’ll never be tsarina,” I told her.
“If I cannot have him, monsieur, no one shall.”
We stepped apart and she was gone, submerged in the crowd. I tried to follow after her, but I could not. The dance continued. I turned and faced my next partner.
She was dressed as Marie Antoinette in a flouncy dress with poufy hair. Her face was pale and her cheeks and lips rouged. In a macabre touch, she wore a necklace of garnets, the jewel of death. Fitting for a woman who would eventually be beheaded. She was young, I could see. My age at most.
We bowed and began to dance. Forward and back. Around and back. I took her hand and rose it. Our faces were but a foot apart.
“Hello, Thomas,” she said.
It was Sofia Ilyanova.
I stumbled, nearly fell, and was immediately overrun by volleys of couples aimed at us. We were separated and a minute later she was gone. I pushed my way through the crowd of aristocrats to Barker’s side.
“That Richelieu is Hesketh Pierce,” the Guv said, disappointed.
“She’s here, sir!” I interrupted. “Sofia Ilyanova. I just saw her. She’s dressed as Marie Antoinette.”
“Where is she?”
“She disappeared, sir.”
“Damn and blast!” he cried. “Well, look for her!”
I did. We both did. He told Scotland Yard and Pierce and we were all searching for her, but she had indeed disappeared. Vanished like a creature of the air, a sylph.
“I don’t see how she got out of this room,” I told the Guv after we’d searched for twenty minutes. “One would think a woman dressed as Marie Antoinette would not be difficult to find.”
“She changed her clothing, Thomas. She brought a second costume with her, possibly even a man’s evening kit and a mask, since everyone is looking for a woman. You are certain it was Nightwine’s daughter?”
“Oh, it was her all right,” I insisted. “She spoke to me. She called me by my name.”
“There was no attempt on the tsarevich?”
“None,” I admitted. “He’s danced with a dozen girls and is now drinking champagne with his cousins. He’s surrounded by a full thirty people hoping to fling their daughters at him, but he doesn’t seem to care.”
“Why should he?” the Guv asked. “He’s got a mistress. I’m doing my best to keep them apart.”
I glanced at Nicholas. He wore a doublet, a wide-sleeved shirt, breeches, and a pair of black boots that folded over at the knee.
“Look at him,” I said. “Doesn’t he realize what danger he is in?”
“I think it likely this lad doesn’t have any idea,” Barker replied. “Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”
“But I don’t understand. Why didn’t Sofia kill Nicholas when she had the chance? She could have done it easily. Do you think she came tonight merely to speak to me?”
“Perhaps. Who can say? She may have come all the way to England to see you. If she’d wanted to, she could have killed Nicholas in Saint Petersburg.”
I turned and looked about. The Musketeers were still carousing. The dancing continued unabated. No one was aware that a person responsible for several deaths around the world had danced among them, unnoticed.
Just then I turned and saw Mathilde Kschessinska walk up to the tsarevich and speak to him. My stomach tightened.
“My word, is there any security at all here tonight?” I said, pointing her out to Barker. “We should stop her.”
“No,” Barker growled, charging toward the tsarevich.
I looked ahead of him in time to see Mathilde’s hand retrieving a pistol from a pocket of her dress. Time seemed to stop. Her hand was in the air, her finger on the trigger ready to fire, ready to kill Nicholas. Ready to make us a disgrace among our peers. No warrant. Possibly no expunging of my record. Oh, and no future leader for Russia.
Cyrus Barker ripped the pistol from her hand just as Pierce lunged forward and seized her by the shoulders. The Guv broke open the pistol.
“Empty,” he said. “Hollow, like her threats.”
Nicholas had blanched and ducked from the rose weapon. He now stepped forward again once he knew he was safe.
“Mathilde, how could you?” he demanded.
She began to scream at him in Russian. It was a monumental tantrum. I stepped up behind her to see the spectacle. Hesketh Pierce had lifted his absurd mask. He leaned over toward me.
“He ended their relationship this afternoon,” he said. “Princess Alix has agreed to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church. The queen has had her way.”
Pierce and two of his men literally carried the girl away, screaming and flailing as she went.
When they were gone, there was a pause. Then the band, in its powdered wigs, began again. Switch partners and dance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
At approximately eleven o’clock that night Rebecca and I heard the telephone set ring in the hall below. She and I looked at each other. We’d been asleep and the house seemed so restful that the jangling seemed unusually loud. It continued to ring, two, three, four, five, before Mac finally answered the call. No doubt he’d been asleep as well, though the Guv read until late. He told me once he had the whole of Western culture to study in order to keep up with the rest of us. In reply, I said that one in fifty had paid as close attention as he.
Mac murmured into the receiver for a moment, then there was some sort of brief argument, and then I heard the phone set down in its cradle with some force. He ascended the stair to our landing and then continued up to Barker’s chamber. There was another murmured argument, and footsteps moving above us. Then Mac came down in an ill mood and knocked upon our door. We both jumped up and put on our dressing gowns. Then I answered as if we hadn’t yet retired.
“Yes?” I asked, opening the door.
“The Guv says to get dressed. Nicholas is missing.”
I shut the door at once and began pulling clothes, any clothes, from the wardrobe in our rooms. My wife had grown as accustomed as any wife can to her husband getting up and out the door in the middle of the night, often involving work that can be dangerous. One is up to devilry at this hour and that is frequently what we were up against.
Barker and I found a cab in Newington Causeway.
“Sir,” he said to the cabman. “Take us to Kensington Palace immediately. Time is of the essence. Put your horse in a lather and get us there now!”
“Right, sir,” he replied. “Hold on to your seats, gentlemen!”
We climbed aboard and were soon heading to the Middlesex side of the Thames at breakneck speed.
“What do you know?” I asked.
“Very little, blast it. Jim Hercules said the tsarevich was last seen in the company of both Prince George and the grand duke. It was an impromptu party after the ball to celebrate George’s last night of freedom.”
We turned a corner on one wheel but righted ourselves after a few nail-biting seconds.
“Could it be a trick and the breakup just a ploy?” I asked. “Could the display with Mathilde Kschessinska have been a ruse? Could they have eloped?”
“Tonight?” Barker asked. His hand gripped the leather door so tightly I expected to pay for a new one.
“It’s possible,” I answered. “It could have been the plan all along. The ball was a subterfuge.”
A few nervous minutes later we skidded to a halt in front of the entrance to Kensington Palace and alighted. I gave the man ten pounds and my partner and I ran through the long paths to the entrance. I thought we’d be stopped there, but who should be waiting for us but Jim Hercules and Hesketh Pierce of the Home Office.
“Come, gentlemen,” Pierce said, a grim look on his face.
“Mr. Llewelyn has broached the theory that they may have escaped in order for the tsarevich
to marry Mathilde Kschessinska,” the Guv said. “What happened after your men took her away?”
Pierce mopped his brow with his handkerchief. He was no longer dressed as Richelieu. “The tsarevich insisted we release her,” he growled. “This is a nightmare.”
“Is it possible they escaped the palace grounds?” I asked.
“No. We are surrounded by guards. They were told to be particularly vigilant tonight.”
Barker turned to Hercules. “Did it seem as if George was leaving them or that they would join him later?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.” He turned and looked at Barker. “Do you think you can find my friend?”
“Even if he doesn’t want to be found?”
“Especially then,” Jim said. “He’s not very good at making decisions, if you had not noticed.”
He looked at Barker as he had on that day he first walked into our offices. Impress me.
“Let us start in the shooting range,” the Guv said. He looked at one of the guards. “Look for Prince George of Greece and Denmark. He seems the most levelheaded of the group.”
Hercules led us down various sets of stairs and through empty halls until we reached an area I recognized. There he opened a door and led us inside.
“What purpose did this room serve before it was improvised as a shooting gallery?” the Guv asked.
“I don’t know, sir,” I said. “It was as you see it.”
“I looked at a map of the building a few evenings ago,” he continued. “This room had no name, just an X across it, as one would use indicating a storage room.”
“Interesting. I wonder what is in these barrels.”
The Guv reached into a sleeve and extracted his dagger. He examined the barrel top on which the infamous pistol that had killed Pushkin had laid. He found the cork and began prying it out with the knife. It did not come easily and we all watched in frustration. Finally, the cork came free.
Barker bent over the barrel and sniffed. “Empty. There is no odor at all, save a slight mustiness. I believe it once contained water for the household. It is very likely all these barrels did.”
