The Jewel of St. Petersburg
Page 15
“Valentina.”
Her pulse slowed. She waited.
“Valentina, what did that Hussar want to speak to your father about?”
“Captain Chernov?”
“Yes, Captain Chernov.”
“He’s nothing to me. Forget him.” She trailed her fingers through the crisp air as though to flick any trace of him from their tips. No stars to gaze at. No moon.
“It’s not hard to guess what he wanted to speak to your father about. You.”
“He’s nothing to me,” she said again, more deliberately this time, and she stepped forward. “I will have nothing to do with Captain Chernov. Nothing.”
His fingers cradled her chin, tilting it directly into the beam of lamplight from above the door. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
She wanted to say, Hold me. Just Hold me.
The sound of a car’s engine rumbled its way into the silence, and the crunch of wheels dug into the gravel. Her father had arrived home.
“Valentina,” Jens said in a low voice, releasing her chin, “don’t let others decide your life for you.”
The car door banged and her father came striding toward them. Valentina’s eyes caught those of the chauffeur sitting in the driver’s seat in his uniform, observing her sharply, but she turned her head away as though he were invisible.
“Good evening to you, sir.” Jens gave a courteous bow to her father and received a curt nod in response. Wrapped in his thick fur coat, General Ivanov resembled a bear lumbering into its den as he threw open the front door with a grunt of satisfaction.
“Inside, Valentina. Now, please. I wish to have a word with you.”
He walked into the house without waiting for a reply. She stood where she was until the car moved away toward the garage at the back of the house, and for a brief moment they were alone again.
“Jens,” she said, “don’t forget what I have promised you.”
“No,” he said in that low voice that burrowed under her skin, “I won’t forget. Have nothing to do with him.”
She nodded, and in the slash of light from the doorway she saw his mouth curve into what might have been a smile. But now he was out of reach. She watched him move with long easy strides toward his carriage, and the horse whinnied a soft welcome. Valentina knew she couldn’t stop the words that had to come next.
“Jens.”
He halted. The lamplight caught the edge of his jaw and a twist of his hair.
“Jens, will you do the same?”
“What do you mean?”
“What about the woman who wears green gowns and who sinks hooks into you with her eyes? The one who walks as if she owns the world.”
He frowned. “Countess Serova?”
“Ah yes, she looks like a countess. That one.”
“What about her?”
“Will you have nothing more to do with her?”
She heard his intake of breath.
“Will you?” she insisted.
He started to return to her, one hand extended, palm up, the way he would hold out an apple to a horse. “It’s complicated,” he explained, “not so easy to ...”
“I see.” She clamped her teeth together.
“No, you don’t see at all. I do promise that I will have nothing to do with her in the way that you mean, but I still have to visit her because ... Valentina, don’t ...”
It was too late. She had vanished into the house.
IT’S COMPLICATED. WHAT DID HE MEAN BY THAT? How could he still be intending to visit Countess Serova? Surely he realized that ...
“Valentina,” her father was saying, “I want to start by stating that I have good news for you.”
He was going to agree to the nursing. She relaxed and gave him a grateful smile. “Thank you, Papa.”
“You’ve met Captain Stepan Chernov?”
“Da.”
“A handsome man, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
Valentina nodded. She was trying to be agreeable. She had not forgotten Number 4 on her list. Make Papa forgive me.
“His father is Count Chernov,” he expanded, “head of one of the most distinguished families in Petersburg. The captain is an extremely wealthy young man. Are you aware of this?”
“Mama mentioned it to me.”
“I want you to marry him.”
The words cut her. Razor sharp.
“Papa.” She didn’t shout. Didn’t beg. Instead she spoke quietly. “I don’t intend to marry anyone. I intend to take care of Katya.”
For a moment he wouldn’t look at her. “Captain Chernov has asked my permission to pay his attentions to you. It is a great honor.” His cheekbones were working, as if he were chewing on something hard. “I don’t want any more of this foolishness from you, Valentina. Your mother and I are in agreement about this. As your father, believe me, I know what is best for you. You will thank me when you are older.”
She stood immobile on the Persian rug. “Papa, I don’t wish to cross you, honestly I don’t, but neither do I wish to marry Captain Chernov. I’ve explained that ...”
Color rose to his cheeks in a dark flush, and his heavy brows bunched together over disappointed eyes. She knew he felt she was letting him down.
“Please don’t disobey me, Valentina.”
“Or what, Papa? What will you do?” She tried to smile. “Horse-whip me?”
He walked over to her, put an arm around her shoulder and kissed the side of her head. “Thank you for saving Katya. Now I need you to do this for me. It’s as simple as that.”
HER ROOM WAS COLD BUT VALENTINA DIDN’T NOTICE. She slipped out of her clothes, dropping them on the floor, but she couldn’t slip out of her skin. She crawled into bed and pulled the quilt over her head. Shivers came.
As simple as that.
Nothing about this was simple. Not with her father and not with Jens.
“Jens, I made a promise to you. Nothing to do with him. I swore it to you.”
Outside the wind tapped at the window.
“So why, Jens,” she whispered, “why wouldn’t you make the same promise to me?”
She stilled her pulse, waiting for that low voice of his to murmur in her mind. Minutes ticked past but no voice came, so she threw off the quilt.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT HERE?” Valentina jumped. “Nothing.”
She could just make out the looming bulk of Liev Popkov in the darkness. He was ten paces away, leaning against a wall of the house, and her eyes would not have picked him out of the dense layers of black if he hadn’t spoken.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.
“Long enough.”
“Spying on me? For my father?”
He grunted. She heard him spit.
They were outside on the gravel at the back of the house, where by day the sun barely reached at this time of year and by night it froze hard. Ice and snow bunched in treacherous ruts. Valentina was scraping them with a stick, prodding at them, sliding her gloved fingers over them. With great care she examined them inch by inch in the light that fell from the music room window. She wanted to ask Liev to help her but the words stuck in her throat, so she continued her search alone and in silence. For a full five minutes neither spoke.
“Looking for something?” he asked at last.
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“That’s my business.”
“It’s cold out here.”
She said nothing but continued to scrape at the ice. Another five minutes of silence.
“Is this what you’re looking for?”
Her head snapped up. He hadn’t moved from the spot but he was holding out his hand. She walked over, wary of the ice, and stared at his big paw. In the center of it lay something that gleamed, something metal. She snatched it from him, closed her fingers tight on it. It was the key to the piano.
“You bastard!”
He laughed, loud and boisterous.
“You bastard,” she said again.
And stalked back into the house.
VIKTOR ARKIN WATCHED POPKOV AMBLE BACK TO THE stables. He’d seen the big man skulking in the shadows for hours, indifferent to the snow and the raking wind, waiting to see if the girl would come in search of whatever it was she’d lost. He’d observed the way Popkov baited her, teased her till she lost her temper with him, and he envied the careless ease of it. As if Popkov didn’t give a damn. She’d called him a bastard but they had laughed. Together they had laughed. Arkin couldn’t work out why.
He felt awkward with women, tongue-tied and mystified by what it was they wanted to talk about. The women at his political meetings and on the committees were all vociferous and aggressive. Wanting to be men, it seemed to him. He sometimes felt the urge to talk to Valentina and her mother, to stop the car and really talk to them, to find out what was in their minds. There was something about Valentina that didn’t quite fit in. That was why she had startled him so much when she caught him unloading the ammunition in the church, because he had no idea how she would react. It was obvious she was suspicious, but would she voice her suspicions to her father? Would she ask him to call for the Okhrana?
He would have to be more careful, more than ever now. He walked silently back to the garage, let himself in, and closed the door behind him. His nerves tightened, but hardly anyone else came in here. It was safe. Always it was the same, this fire that was consuming him, this need to march forward into the new tomorrow. Impatience plucked and pulled at him, and he tried to quiet it by moving to the back of the garage behind the car. Against the wall he had arranged a tidy stack of cardboard boxes containing engine parts, oil cans, polishing cloths, spare tools, machine bits and pieces, all things that belonged in a garage. No one would suspect, no one would delve deeper.
Only he knew of the crate that lay at the bottom of the boxes. Only he knew what it contained.
Sixteen
NURSE SONYA WAS TO BE VALENTINA’S CHAPERONE FOR the afternoon. Her bulky figure sat upright on the seat in the Turicum in her best black coat and gloves, and Valentina noticed that her hat with its red velvet band was new.
“We are very privileged,” Nurse Sonya said, eyes bright. “To see the tsar.”
“That’s true.”
It was true. Valentina was acutely aware of that fact. But Arkin was sitting in front of her at the wheel of the car, and she wondered what thoughts were crowding through his proletarian brain. When the car drew up, the place wasn’t remotely as she had been expecting. She had imagined a wooden hut next to a giant hole in the ground and a rusty metal ladder fixed to the inside of the hole. She’d been nervous about climbing down and had abandoned most of her petticoats to make leg action easier. She wore a fox fur coat and hat at her mother’s insistence, as she would be in the presence of Tsar Nicholas, but underneath she’d chosen a simple wool dress with a high neck for warmth and a loose design for freedom of movement.
“Excited?” she asked the nurse as they stepped out of the car.
“To meet Tsar Nicholas will be one of the best moments of my life.” Nurse Sonya shook her head in astonishment. “I never thought I would live to see the day that I would receive such an honor.”
Arkin was standing beside the step to help her out of the car, and Valentina glanced up at his face. But she saw nothing there. He was wearing his usual bland expression, but she would bet her sable muff that he was listening to their conversation.
“Arkin,” she said.
“Yes, Miss Valentina.”
“When you have parked the car you may come back here to cheer the tsar when he arrives.” She looked straight into his impassive gray gaze. “If you wish.”
“Thank you, Miss Valentina.”
She gave him a small smile. A tiny victory in return for that rifle shot. Then she inspected the building they were about to enter. It wasn’t a wooden hut of any kind, quite the opposite in fact. It was an imposing three-story structure built of brick with an entrance framed by elaborate stonework. Most striking was the way its façade curved outward, as though imitating the curves of the tunnels that crept like thieves under the city’s streets. No giant holes in sight, not yet. No uniformed Cossacks either, the tsar’s personal bodyguards.
The doors swung open as she approached, and her pulse lost its rhythm when she saw Jens standing in the entrance. One hand was already stretched out toward her in greeting, as though impatient with the immaculate manners of the rest of him.
“Ladies, good afternoon, dobriy den. You have arrived. I thought you may have had second thoughts about coming out in this foul fog.”
Did he really think that she wouldn’t come?
He bowed over the older woman’s hand first and said, “You brighten my day, Nurse Sonya, with your glorious hat. It’s my pleasure to meet you.”
Her cheeks flushed. “This old thing. I thought its brim would protect me from any drips in the tunnels.”
“How perceptive of you,” he smiled.
Valentina wanted to snatch the nurse’s gloved hand from his, but when he finally turned to her she forgave him. Forgave him anything because he looked at her as if he had been waiting for this moment all day and counted the minutes all night. He let her see this, didn’t hide it from her. She thought that in today’s fog his eyes would be dull and colorless, but they shone as vivid as the first shoots of spring grass. He took her hand and for a moment she thought he was going to raise it to his lips, but he restrained himself. He bowed low over it instead, so that she saw the top of his head, the way his hair sprang from his scalp as though it had somewhere to go. She resisted the urge to touch it.
“Good afternoon, Jens,” she said quietly.
Their eyes held. Her fingers curled in his for a moment before she withdrew them.
“Is everyone here?” she asked him. “Ready for Tsar Nicholas’s arrival?”
His mouth tightened. “His Imperial Majesty has been unavoidably detained, I’m afraid. He will not be accompanying us on the tour of the engineering works after all.”
A squeal of disappointment came from Nurse Sonya. “Oh,” she said in a long, drawn-out sigh.
“I apologize for the unforeseen change of plan, but there are many calls on His Imperial Majesty’s time. Minister Davidov and his wife are here.”
“But no tsar?” the nurse wailed.
“No tsar.”
“Don’t be foolish, Nurse,” Valentina said sternly. “It’s the engineering accomplishment we have come to see. It will, I’m certain, make up for your disappointment.”
“Are you also disappointed, Valentina?”
It was Jens who asked, his question so sharp, so direct, it took her by surprise.
“No.”
“Truly?”
“I came to see the tunnels.”
“Then I’d better take you to them.”
He offered her his arm and they walked through the door together. There must have been an entrance hall and other people, but she didn’t notice them. She was aware only of the strong straight bones of his forearm under her hand and the warmth of his shoulder against hers.
The tunnels, she reminded herself. That’s why I’m here.
SHE’D BEEN WRONG ABOUT THE RUSTY LADDER. THEY’D descended in a heavy mechanical elevator, more suitable as an animal cage than a transporter of humans. The iron door slammed shut and Valentina’s stomach clung to the ground floor while the rest of her sank into the bowels of the earth. She’d greeted Madam Davidova, remembering her from the ball the other night, and been introduced to the other guests, but her thoughts were only with Jens and his tunnels.
They were distinctly menacing, The air underground smelled like a dead animal. Water dripped down the walls, and pockets of darkness hid from the string of lamps that looped along the
arched roof.
There were twelve guests, including herself. Four officials from the project: an engineer, a surveyor, the foreman of the works, and lastly a water specialist. All of them moved through the tunnels as naturally as moles, ducking their heads without thinking when the rooflevel lowered, turning their faces automatically to one side when they passed an offshoot tunnel with its onrush of dank air.
Up in the entrance hall there had been speeches. Jens had given a talk on the aims of the project, on the need for drainage and sewer system to improve the health of the city. Two thousand dead last year, cholera rampant in the slums. So many millions of gallons pumped out each day. The low water table caused flooding because St. Petersburg was built on mosquito-infested marshes. So many million bricks, fired in Moscow and transported. A workforce that labored in twelve-hour shifts, night and day. Sewage pipes running arrow-straight all the way north to the Gulf of Finland.
Valentina stopped listening to his words. She stared at his mouth, watched the way his lips moved. He was wearing a leather hat that flattened his hair and thick rubber-soled boots that squelched through water, making slapping sounds. She liked the way everyone listened when he spoke, even the sour-faced Minister Davidov, and that when he eventually stopped speaking, he maneuvered himself into a position next to her.
“Interested?” he asked.
“Yes, very.”
“Frightened?”
“Yes, very.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She laughed. “Your achievement is spectacular,” she added. “You must be very proud.”
He nodded, smiling at her, examining her face. Nurse Sonya was busy in front of them conversing at length with Madam Davidova about the use of camphor in rooms to rid a house of stale smells. She was just turning to advocate its use underground to Jens, when a sound like the crust of the earth cracking open roared through the tunnel, ripping at eardrums. The ground splintered beneath Valentina’s feet.
Lights blacked out as people’s screams echoed, only to be swallowed by the crash of rocks and bricks spilling down from above. Valentina stumbled, caught up in the panic, and would have fallen if a hand had not seized her wrist and yanked her against a wall. She groped for direction in the darkness. Blind and choking on dust, she had the sense to keep her mouth shut.