by Kim Wright
“The noises from your toilette in the morning,” he’d said. “And little changes in your body. They tell a man what he needs to know, do they not?”
She had numbly nodded. She would not have guessed he paid so much attention, but he did, and his plan was already in motion. He was making arrangements for her to leave St. Petersburg. Not tomorrow, nor the next day, nor the next, but now.
And so Tatiana had gone knocking on Ella’s door for the second time that afternoon. Ella had listened to this new complication and then briskly nodded. They would both go, she said. If they arrived at the seaside villas before everyone else, it would be easier to create the fiction that Tatiana had miscarried. She could send a wire to Filip with the sad news that the carriage ride had unseated her pregnancy.
“It is not a change of our plans, merely a small variation,” Ella assured her, and then she had rang for her maid and begun to pack. A carriage was called for and it was furthermore arranged that this would leave from the private stables, the one near the gentleman’s enclave. It was a part of the palace Tatiana had never seen, a part Ella had presumably never visited either, and as they walked the long halls, the men with their luggage trailing behind them, Tatiana had wondered at the secrecy of their leave taking. They were dashing off at a strange hour, from a hidden exit, as if they had committed some dreadful crime, as if their departure was not only unexpected, but illegal.
Their husbands had each come down to the stable to bid them farewell. Tatiana had watched as Ella’s fifteen trunks and her two were strapped to the top of the carriage. As silken wraps were loaded into the interior, along with bolsters and pillows. They would ride straight through the night, it would seem, and Tatiana glanced up at the driver who had drawn this thankless assignment. Filip had kissed her forehead and departed. Serge had kissed Ella’s and followed suit.
And then, just as Tatiana had expected they would simply climb into the carriage, close the doors, and roll through the gates, Ella had begun to think of a dozen things she had forgotten. A special pair of shoes. Her Bible. Some sort of medication. A note for dear Granny, explaining her abrupt departure. Another for darling Alix. For darling Alix must be made to understand. Ella insisted upon personally viewing the food arranged for their trip, so the hamper had to be located and unpacked. Unsurprisingly, she had been displeased with the contents. Another note, this one to the kitchen asking for pate.
In short, the hour had chimed nine and they were still sitting in the pebbly courtyard, waiting for Ella to finally proclaim them on their way. Why does she hesitate to leave the palace? Tatiana thought. Is it merely that those born to privilege never develop a talent for doing anything quickly? Or is something holding her here - some guilt or indecision masquerading itself as a request for an obscure kind of pate?
The Grand Ballroom
9:10 PM
“But I want to dance first,” said Xenia, with a pout.
“My gypsy princess must dance last,” Tom said, still swirling his ridiculous cape and using his ridiculous accent. The surveillance had gone well. He and Emma had made note of where each of the imperial ladies would be entering the dance floor and the Scotland Yard team presumably had explored the audience level in its entirety. Tomorrow they would enter the ballroom with far more information in their hands.
“He’s right,” Emma said desperately. The child had gripped one of Tom’s arms and she had gripped the other. “The last lady to warm up is in the most advantageous position when the waltz begins.”
Xenia seemed to ponder the statement, while Emma noticed that Trevor had ventured farther down the stairs and was looking in their direction. With a strategic toss of her head she saw that no, he was actually not looking at them but was rather observing something just past them, the base of the cottage scene, where several workmen were still arranging flowers and stones into a garden far too ornate to adorn any real peasant’s home.
“I promise,” Tom said to Xenia. “I dance with you last, and longest, and best.”
Trevor was now moving faster and with more purpose, Emma noted, although Tom was still facing the sullen Xenia and did not seem to be aware that something was unfolding. And just then Emma saw the danger, come in the shape of two young workmen. They had turned in unison away from the stone cottage, almost as if they were doing some dance of their own, and they were behind Tom and Xenia in an instant. The taller one tossed a swath of burlap over her head and lifted the girl, hefting her over his shoulder while the smaller man threw his weight against Tom, knocking him nearly off his feet. He stumbled into Emma, his hat and mask flying off and Emma screamed. Trevor was now running, following the man who had snatched Xenia, while the smaller man, the one who had pushed Tom off balance, ran out another door.
Amazingly, no one around them seemed to have noticed what had just happened. They had been standing off the ballroom floor, in one of the little alcoves that rested nearly behind the theatrical sets. It was the location from which Xenia was to enter for her part of the waltz, and she had evidently pulled Tom to the spot while insisting that he warm up with her. Had she by accident played into the hands of the workmen? Were they prepared to grab any of the ladies in the red dresses and was her abduction thus random? Or had they known who would be in each corner of the room and pretended to work on the cottage scene precisely because it gave them close proximity to the tsar’s daughter? The music had begun, and with the full orchestra it was far louder than it had ever been in rehearsal, loud enough that no one had heard Emma’s cry for help.
Tom sprinted after the man who had struck him while Emma shouted again, this time toward the doors where Rayley and Davy were posted. But neither man heard her, so she ran up the steps - first to Davy, who upon hearing her frantic description of the events of the last minute, looked helplessly in one direction and then the other. There were so many passageways leading to the theater that presumably Trevor and the first assailant had gone in one direction and Tom and the other had fled via some different route.
We could run these halls forever and not find them, Emma thought, but by then Rayley had joined them. From his vantage point of the central door he must have seen more of what happened, for he had already concocted a plan by the time he reached Emma and Davy.
“Stay in the theater,” he barked to Emma. “Don’t argue with me and don’t try to follow. Find the tsar’s guard, for there must be some of them around, and tell them the littlest grand duchess has been seized. Send them in the direction of the gentleman’s enclave. Which is where we are going as well,” he added with a gesture to Davy. “There are only two ways they can get her out, by boat or on horseback. You take the dock and I shall take the stable.”
Davy nodded and the two of them disappeared. Emma leaned against the doorframe and yanked her dance shoes off, blinking back tears as she did so. She looked around but saw no one who looked like a member of the guard, even though there were a dozen or so ladies of exalted birth in the ballroom, moving about laughing, chatting, or preparing to dance.
We are fools, she thought. We knew this was going to happen and yet, with all five of us in attendance, it still happened. A movement from the door across the expanse of the ballroom caught her eye. It was the door where Rayley had been waiting and now another man stood there, a man three times the size of her friend. A man who was looking directly at her in her red dress. A dress like the one Xenia wore, like Ella owned, and a dozen other ladies, including his own wife. Emma screamed again, this time at the sight of Filip Orlov. But that sound, like all the others, was absorbed into the persistent rhythm of the waltz.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Halls of the Gentlemen’s Enclave
9:20 PM
An angry twelve year old girl in a burlap sack is not a particularly easy thing to carry. When Gregor had practiced the choreography of the abduction, Vlad had played the role of the grand duchess and through repetition, Gregor had become quite confident in his ability to throw the sack over the head of his vict
im, then turn and hoist her to his shoulder.
But of course Vlad had remained cooperatively still and the real-life duchess was kicking, squirming, twisting, and doing everything in her power to express her profound displeasure with this turn of events. He had gotten her down the main hall – which had been cleared of all traffic by the order of Filip – and into the more obscure passages leading to the enclave, but it had been a struggle and he was already tiring with the effort. Xenia was emitting a seemingly never ending series of yelps and squeals which were muffled by the thick cloth but still entirely too audible for his liking. Gregor could only pray that they would not encounter anyone else along the hallway.
And then, of course, there was that business about the man chasing him.
This was not supposed to happen. The enclaves behind the sets had been precisely as Yulian had described them and Xenia had been waiting to enter the dance floor where predicted. The music was loud, the room was crowded, and all had been going according to plan. Yulian had told them to expect few guards within the theater, at least not during rehearsals, and had said that if Xenia was to be found with any man in attendance, it would most likely be her dance master. Vlad had done an admirable job of taking that fop off his feet, but then, out of nowhere, descending down a flight of stairs like some vengeful god, had come an entirely different fellow. No, not at all part of the plan. And now the fat fool was chasing Gregor and shouting in English.
Gregor knew he held advantages in the areas of youth, athletic prowess, and of course the fact he knew where they were going. But none of his bobs and weaves had so far fooled the fellow, who seemed, in fact, to be gaining on them. His gasping and rasping were becoming louder, and Gregor found himself stumbling as the Grand Duchess – who was frankly far less ladylike than one would expect – managed to strike the dead center of his chest with her knee, thus knocking the air from him and rendering him momentarily disoriented. He stumbled and lost his grip on the sack, her leaden form dropping at his feet with an appallingly loud thump, and then, just as he debated the advisability of trying to lift her again, the man who was chasing him rounded the final corner.
He would be upon them in seconds. Gregor decided it was time to use his final advantage and he fumbled for the pistol in his pocket.
9:20 PM
Emma was angry at herself for screaming, that most useless and classic of all female reactions. Not only had the sound been lost in the noisy ballroom but Filip Orlov had hardly been focused on her. He had paused in the central doorway for the same reason Rayley had been there earlier, because it offered the best vantage point on the entire ballroom, both the upper and lower levels. Judging from the expression on the man’s face he had taken the measure of the situation almost at once, and knew that his young minions down on the floor had walked into a trap. He had left the door with the same haste as everyone else, headed for heaven knows where.
She needed to stay focused on her own task. Rayley had told her to find the palace police and there didn’t appear to be any of them in the ballroom. Evidently the majority of the men on duty were clustered around the Queen’s apartment, stationed there by the dour-faced Viktor Prakov as a courtesy to Trevor. With a sigh, for it was questionable if they would abandon their position based on the order of an English woman in a red spangled dress, she turned in the direction of the guest wing of the palace.
9:20 PM
Filip knew they had failed. The plan had gone with admirable smoothness up to a point, but as he had watched from the balcony he had realized, just before Gregor struck, that the man standing beside Xenia was not Konstantin Antonovich at all, but rather one of the British dandies who had accompanied the Queen. And with this knowledge, it had not been hard to locate the other three men standing in their separate doors. The Welles man in charge of it all, his old comrade Rayley Abrams from the saunas, and finally that goddam little twit Vlad had introduced him to in the streets. Filip had tried to tell Vlad that boy would cause trouble, but it had never, even in his most extreme moments of paranoia, occurred to Filip that rosy-cheeked Davy Mabrey was Scotland Yard.
He had rushed down to the second level hoping he might intercept at least one of them before they too gave chase, but by the time he had arrived there no one was left but one of the women in the red dresses, shrieking to the heavens. God knows who she was or what she had seen but at least the orchestra was dulling the sound of her cries, the only fortune which had favored him yet.
It was time for Plan B. There was always a Plan B and even, for very bad days, a Plan C. Filip could only hope that in their panic Vlad and Gregor remembered it.
9:20 PM
Vlad was lost. He tried to recall Yulian’s drawings and Filip’s descriptions, for he had certainly studied them often enough in the meeting room. But now it seemed that all the facts had left his head and he was being followed by the Siberian dance master, a man who presumably knew the palace like the back of his hand. The problem was that the halls, each lined with doors indicating rooms which were small and close together, all looked too damnably alike and, judging by the familiar smirk of a whore in one of the tawdry portraits, he feared he had somehow doubled back and was passing the same point for the second time. If he wasn’t careful, he was about to run headlong into the man who was chasing him.
In desperation Vlad stopped at a door. A random choice, one of dozens just like it. He turned the knob and it opened.
9:20 PM
Tom was lost. He had been fairly sure that the boy he was chasing had turned off in this direction, but now he was beginning to doubt himself. He had passed the same portrait more than once, that much was certain, and he stopped, bracing his hand against the flocked velvet wall and struggling for breath.
“Tell me, madam,” he said to the buxom woman gazing right at him, despite the fact any number of naughty cherubs were attempting to distract her with grapes. “Has an assassin recently passed this way?”
But the lady was discreet, at least in matters of conversation, so after a moment of rest, Tom decided to retrace his steps back to the entrance of the last set of halls. Perhaps something there might indicate the direction to either the stables or the dock. As he walked he pondered the universal truth that, even when under of the most extraordinary duress, a man always has time to notice a woman without her clothes.
9:24 PM
Trevor took it all in. The long hall. The squirming bundle of burlap. The terrified boy, pointing a shaking pistol in his direction.
A Webley, he thought, with the extraordinary detachment that comes over one in such situations. Standard issue, British service. So this is what became of Mrs. Kirby’s gun.
The odds are that the boy would have missed him anyway. He was clearly untrained with such a weapon and so agitated that he was having trouble taking aim. But Trevor’s luck was furthermore aided by the Grand Duchess Xenia, who by chance chose the moment to give an especially violent heave, one which caused her to strike Gregor’s leg and the gun to jerk abruptly upward just as he fired. A chandelier exploded with a shriek of falling glass which rained down upon Trevor. The boy wobbled, as if trying to decide the advisability of firing again, but then simply turned and fled.
Tom, who had run toward the sound, approached from behind Trevor and then, from another direction, came Rayley. “Gad, Welles, are you all right?” Rayley asked.
Trevor nodded, shards of glass sliding down his shoulders. “See to the girl,” he croaked to Tom, jerking his hand in the direction of the sack. And then to Rayley he added, “We must hurry. I fear he’s trying to escape through the stables.”
9:26 PM
Running barefoot, with her dress grasped up in her hands like a farm girl at the village barn dance, Emma made it to the Queen’s suite of rooms in record time. If she had worried that the police stationed there would ignore her, as it turns out that concern was unwarranted. Instead they tackled her.
As she thudded to the carpeted floor, the weight of a young man in uniform crashing do
wn beside her, the resultant scuffle caused the palace police inside the suite to open the door. And knowing that the cracked door offered her only chance, Emma shrieked again, for perhaps the tenth time of the evening.
“Your Majesty,” she cried. “It’s Emma.”
She was surrounded by gray boots but there, from her humiliating posture on the floor with some random Russian astride her, she mercifully saw the bottom of a black shirt approaching. And the bell-like voice of Victoria said, with absolute calmness, “Release that young woman at once.”
9:26 PM
When Filip reached the portico which connected the men’s enclave to the stable he saw many things which he had anticipated: horses, groomsmen, and various means of transport. But he also saw something which he did not anticipate and which made his heart promptly sink in his chest. The carriage that was to take Tatiana and Ella to the coast was still sitting in the courtyard. The driver, who had obviously given up on the idea of leaving any time soon, was slumbering in his seat on top, his head rolled to the side and his mouth gaping.
Not to panic. Not yet. His cover had not been blown. He strode up to the carriage and wrenched open the door.
“It is so hard to say goodbye, sweetheart,” he called inside. “I have come for a second kiss.”
