Chapter 33
A day or so later I was in the kitchen fetching a glass of warm milk for Alexei when Sergei appeared in the outside vestibule.
‘Be off with you!’ a maid said cheekily. ‘The cook will belt me if I let you in here with your snow-covered boots.’
‘I have no intention of coming inside.’ He waved his hand and I went into the vestibule, where he handed me a folded note. ‘The person who gave that to me said I must wait while you read it and then take it from you.’
I opened out the sheet of paper. It was in a handwriting that was unfamiliar.
‘Do you know what this note contains?’ I asked the coachman.
‘I do.’ He turned his face away from the kitchen door as he spoke. ‘You should heed the warning. When I go into the city tonight I won’t be coming back to Tsarskoe Selo. Not ever.’
A chill went through me, and not because I was standing on the stone floor of the vestibule. ‘I am to obey your instructions?’ I said.
‘First we destroy the note.’ He took the paper and flung it into the stove where, within seconds, it curled into ash. ‘When the Tsarevich has drunk his milk and you have finished your storytelling, then, like the others, you must go to your bedroom. Dress warmly in outdoor clothes. Just before midnight, come along the ground-floor corridors to the other wing of the palace, where you will find the Golden Hall.’
A shiver ran through me. It was to this place that Rasputin had taken me when he’d shown me the portrait of Ivan the Terrible.
‘Unlock the terraced window of the Golden Hall at midnight. This will be dangerous for me, so you may have to wait a while. Tell no one else. No one,’ he repeated, ‘lest you risk the lives of others. You must not say goodbye to anyone.’ He paused as if he knew it would be difficult for me to do this. ‘Their papa is home. Let the children enjoy the company of their parents by themselves for a while.’
At a quarter to midnight I left the Royal Apartments and crept through the palace and along empty passages until I reached the Golden Hall. I went to the window, undid the bolt and looked out. Some distance away the palace guards were sitting around a bonfire. Not spaced at intervals, standing on sentry duty – but grouped together, chatting and drinking. Part of their conversation came to me: complaints about less pay and short rations and the brutality of their commanding officers in punishing simple offences.
Half the night I waited there until, cramped by inaction and the cold, I began to walk about to keep warm. Inevitably I was drawn to the painting of Tsar Ivan wearing the twin daggers in his bandoliers. Like malevolent red eyes the ruby stones stared out at me.
I went closer to the painting and looked at the figure of the Tsar, with the pelt of the wolf encasing his upper body. A shadow slid across the surface of the canvas and the sigh of the snow falling outside was a whispering voice:
One dagger to take a life.
It was as if Rasputin was in the room with me.
The shadow grew larger and the whisper louder:
One dagger to …
Mesmerized, I stared into the eyes of Ivan the Terrible. His gaze met mine.
‘Nina.’
A noise behind me. I turned round. A figure outlined against the window pane …
Rasputin?
‘Holy Mother!’ I raised my hands to shield my face.
‘Hush!’ Sergei came in the terrace door.
So shocked was I that I couldn’t move.
‘What ails you?’ He walked forward. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I did. The figure in the painting looked out at me. I saw it. I heard …’ I gabbled on about Rasputin and daggers, and Tsar Ivan and curses. ‘The monk told me the story of this painting,’ I finally gulped to a halt.
‘It was me who told the story to the monk,’ said Sergei. ‘When he returned to the palace and I saw that he was carrying the dagger I advised him to give it away, but he didn’t listen.’
‘You!’ I said. ‘Then you know the origin of the daggers and where they went.’
‘I know neither of those things,’ he replied. ‘The daggers are centuries old, and where they went is a mystery.’
‘What do you know then?’
‘The legend of their power was common currency among the servants. The saying was: “One dagger to take a life. One dagger to save a life.” When I was a young stable lad the twin daggers were kept here, in the Golden Hall, inside a display case positioned below the painting of Ivan the Terrible. One January, at the time of the Wolf Moon, there was a reception in the Golden Hall. The room was crowded. Titled people from Russia and beyond came to eat and dance, to gossip and gamble and conduct romances. The next morning the daggers were gone. They searched the servant quarters. Nothing was found.
‘It must have been a guest who took the daggers,’ Sergei went on. ‘A servant would never steal such things. There would be no way one of us could hide them or sell them without being found out. Servants do steal, yes – but mainly food; a nibble here and there, a piece of fruit, perhaps a lace handkerchief, no more than petty pilfering – never silverware or goods like that.
‘But they weren’t believed. The footmen on duty in the Golden Hall that night were horsewhipped anyway – in the main courtyard, as an example to the rest – and they and their families thrown off the estate to starve and die.’
‘That is a terrible tale,’ I said.
‘It is,’ said Sergei. ‘But better that these daggers are lost, for where they are, death and destruction follow on.’
When we reached the city I said goodbye to Sergei and thanked him and wished him luck.
Before he drove away he called out to me, ‘Do not think any more about the Rasputin dagger,’ he said. ‘It is gone from history as he has – for ever.’
I entered via the back gate, knocking quietly on the scullery door as I knew Galena would already be awake and on her way out to join the bread queue. She was in raptures to see me.
‘I’m so glad you are home, Nina!’ She wrapped her arms around my waist in a bone-crushing hug. ‘We’ve been frantic for news of you! The price of milk and potatoes has risen again and children are dying from the cold. There are rumours that some ruffians will try to seize the Tsar and his family and burn down the Alexander Palace. I hope their guards are fully armed and can fight hard.’
I thought it best not to mention the soldiers I’d seen lounging around their braziers, and only said, ‘Then it’s as well you sent the note to tell me to leave the Palace at once.’
Galena paused in the act of tying her snood. ‘I never sent you any note.’
‘I assumed it was you,’ I said, ‘for I would have recognized the handwriting of Dr K or Stefan.’
She turned away from my direct gaze. ‘It wasn’t me,’ she said. ‘No, it definitely was not me. But’ – she smiled – ‘I am grateful for whoever wrote it, for Dr K guessed that his letters weren’t reaching you and he was determined to ride out to Tsarskoe Selo today to fetch you himself.’
‘You needn’t worry any more,’ I said. ‘I will not go there again until at least the war has ended.’
‘The city was quiet last night,’ Galena went on. ‘But it’s the silence before a storm. Vera and Duscha are saying that it’s time the women showed the men what to do. But whether there is trouble today or not, your life may change soon anyway, Nina.’ She looked at me archly. ‘Have you decided to accept the marriage proposal from Tomas?’
‘Not yet,’ I replied.
‘Good,’ she said, and off she clumped down the path in her big boots.
Chapter 34
The sound of a sleigh in the street woke me and I went to the window and watched Nina dismount onto the pavement and go round the side of the house. Wrapping myself in a blanket, I went downstairs.
My heart hiccupped when I reached the step where, weeks ago, I had looked down to see Nina coming out of Dr K’s study, where Tomas had proposed to her. I’d thought she’d noticed me on the stairs and that was why
she was smiling. And then Tomas was close behind her, and he touched her on the shoulder and she twisted her head, and I realized that the smile was for him. I guessed by the expression on his face that he’d just kissed her.
They looked natural in each other’s company – as if they belonged together.
Why was I even thinking about it?
About her.
Tomas was a good friend. Cheered me up when I was low. So I was glad for him; glad he’d found someone he wanted to share his life with. It was one pleasant thing in the sea of sewage that was our modern life. When he left for Moscow he’d shaken my hand and made me promise to take care of Nina. He’d write often and return in the spring, when he hoped they would be married.
What happened to Nina didn’t make any difference to me.
And yet …
My mind kept going back to the night I’d come into the house after Rasputin’s murder.
How close we’d been.
She was a pretty girl. I knew many pretty girls in the city.
She was clever. I met lots of clever young women in the university. And ones that were both pretty and clever.
But … when I was in an abstract mood it was Nina’s face swimming across my vision. Her I heard voicing her fractious objections to my statements, which forced me – not always successfully – to justify my own opinions.
I opened the kitchen and overheard the exchange between Galena and Nina.
She hadn’t yet agreed to marry Tomas! And now she was home – but this time she had no fur blankets or boxes of food with her. Dishevelled, and with an unhealthy pallor, she stood by the stove, trying to get warm.
A superior remark was forming in my head. But instead of voicing it, I draped the blanket from my bed over her shoulders.
‘Thank you, Stefan.’ She didn’t use my name often, but when she did she had a way of emphasizing the first and last letters, which made it sound different yet familiar.
‘Tea?’
She nodded.
I brought two stools nearer the stove and she sank gratefully onto hers. ‘Don’t tell.’ I handed her a biscuit. Her eyelashes fluttered a question. ‘I know where Galena hides the Treat Tin,’ I explained.
‘She will have counted the biscuits and see that one is missing.’
‘Two,’ I said. I sat down beside her and began to eat my own biscuit. ‘We share the blame.’
She held her glass of hot tea and I watched the colour seep back into her face. We sat there for a bit, not speaking. But the silence wasn’t awkward.
‘Glory be!’ Dr K swept in and gathered Nina up in a massive embrace. ‘Listen, young lady!’ He set her away from him with a hand on each shoulder. ‘You must never go to Tsarskoe Selo again.’
‘I’ve already made that promise to Galena,’ she said. ‘I will not visit the Imperial Family until after the war is ended.’
‘What is happening on our battlefields is not a war,’ I said. ‘Eugene’s letters tell me it is mass slaughter. Disaster follows disaster. Often the common soldier carries just one round of ammunition. Essentially they are fodder for the cannon of our enemies. They say the German soldiers break down and weep as they shovel Russian corpses away from the front of their trenches. But it isn’t the German army which is responsible for this crime against our people. It is those who govern us who are murdering our fellow Russians in their tens of thousands. Is it any wonder that the conscripts are deserting?’
‘The mood of the Imperial Guard at the Alexander Palace has changed,’ said Nina, and she told us of the sentries sitting chatting when they should have been on duty.
‘Fyodor says that the Bolsheviks will make their own army. I suggested they call themselves the Red Guard.’
‘When did you meet Fyodor?’ she asked. ‘How is he?’
‘I spoke to him yesterday. He asked how you were, but he’s as mad as ever. I told him he was making a catastrophic mistake joining that party. The Bolsheviks have given him a gun, may the Saints preserve us!’ I said in mock prayer. ‘He’ll probably rush to the Alexander Palace and shoot the lot of them. Not that I would object to that,’ I added.
‘How are the Imperial Family?’ Dr K asked Nina.
‘I don’t expect they commemorated the anniversary of Bloody Sunday?’ I commented sarcastically.
‘Bloody Sunday?’
‘The twenty-second of January 1905,’ I answered her. ‘Unarmed civilians walking to the Winter Palace to ask for food and fair working conditions were gunned down by the military.’
Dr K put his hands on the table. ‘You should know, Nina, that it was on that day that Stefan’s mother died. I met them both by chance as we marched to hand in a petition to the Tsar. Without warning the army fired upon the crowd. To save his life Stefan’s mother ran in front of him and she was shot.’
‘I had no idea …’ Nina’s voice faltered.
‘You’ve never spoken of it, Stefan,’ said Dr K. ‘Perhaps this is a time for you to do so?’
But I didn’t want sympathy. The ocean of bitterness that slopped about inside me wanted payment, not pity, for that life lost. ‘There is nothing to say,’ I replied. ‘The people went to speak to the Tsar. The army stopped them and murdered hundreds. The Tsar refused to discipline the officers responsible. Afterwards he said he’d allow a Duma Council of the People to have a say in the running of the country, but he doesn’t give it any power. And now we are where we are.’
‘Do you recall anything about that day?’
‘No. Nothing.’ I rejected Dr K’s attempt at therapeutic counselling.
‘Nothing at all?’
He wasn’t going to be put off so easily. I would have to give him something so that he would leave me alone. ‘I was trying to get to the front of the crowd. At the side of the road there was a water fountain. I thought I might climb up there and actually see the Tsar if he came out onto the balcony to greet us. He didn’t listen then.’ My voice began to crack with stress. ‘He’s not listening now.’
‘Stefan is correct in what he says.’ Sensing that I was on the verge of tears, Nina moved her stool closer to mine and angled her body to give me a semi-private space. ‘The Tsar is not listening. He seems incapable of paying attention and absorbing information. Let me tell you what happens within the private apartments of the Alexander Palace.’
She began to speak in a steady voice. And I felt the bond between us strengthen as I realized that Nina was deliberately drawing attention away from me in order that I might have time to recover myself.
Chapter 35
We were eating our watery porridge when Galena came hurrying into the house empty-handed.
‘The bakery is shut down,’ she said. ‘They say there is no more bread.’
‘No bread?’ I repeated in disbelief.
‘None at all.’ She shook her head. ‘There is no flour in the city.’
‘If that is the case, then there will be a riot,’ said Dr K.
‘Not a riot,’ said Galena. ‘A protest with a purpose. The women from the bread queues are meeting up and taking to the streets. We are going to find the government grain stores and batter down the doors. I’m just here for extra clothing.’ She went into her pantry bedroom and came out carrying a bundle of blankets. ‘There are those who do not own a coat and we will be outside the whole day,’ she explained.
Dr K ran out of the room and returned almost immediately. ‘I have locked the house. I forbid you to leave, Galena.’ He positioned himself at the entrance to the scullery and was holding the back-door key in his hand.
‘You can’t forbid it.’ Galena crammed the blankets into a bag which she slung over her shoulder.
‘There will be trouble on the streets today.’
‘There is always trouble on the streets.’
‘Not like this. This is special.’
‘I know exactly how special it is.’ Galena held out her hand for him to give her the door key.
‘You are my housekeeper.’
She
laughed in his face.
‘I employ you to follow my orders.’
‘So sack me!’
I had never heard them row like this before.
‘Your place is to be in this house and – and to look after things … wash and iron, cook and – and such-like.’
‘My place is on the streets with the rest of the women.’
‘There are official orders banning large meetings. This means that the police and the army are free to use any force to curb illegal gatherings. Even though you are peaceful women they might bring out the Cossacks, for the authorities will think the protest has been organized by revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks will welcome the conflict and won’t care who is shot or trampled to death. Lenin and his like see it as a necessary sacrifice to create anarchy.’
‘We have to show that we will not sit meekly at home and watch our children starve. The world needs to know the truth.’
‘Who knows the truth of anything?’
‘Women,’ Galena replied at once. ‘They are the ones who wait in the bread queues. That’s where the real truth is.’
The doctor bowed his head. ‘That in itself is a truth.’
During their heated exchange Nina had left the kitchen to change into a heavier coat. She’d wound her green and purple Siberian shawl around her head and shoulders, crossed it over and tied it at the waist. The tip of her nose peeped out among the swaddling of snood and scarf.
Dr K looked at Galena in disbelief. ‘Not Nina too!’
My heart began to beat very fast. As a boy I had stood in front of a company of Cossacks. Half a lifetime ago – but I’d never forgotten it. The line of riders waiting for their order to charge. The sound of steel on steel as curved sabres were drawn. The thunder of horses’ hooves. The pounding of my own feet as, covered in a sweat of terror, we ran for our lives. Nina would be crushed like a butterfly.
‘Galena! Please!’ Dr K was begging. ‘We have a duty of care. You must not take Nina with you.’
‘No one is taking me anywhere.’ Nina’s voice came, muffled but resolute, from amongst her coverings. ‘I go where I please. I too am a bread-queue woman, and today I will join with my fellow women.’
The Rasputin Dagger Page 17
