The Jewel of St. Petersburg Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  One - TESOVO, RUSSIA JUNE 1910

  Two

  Three - ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA DECEMBER 1910

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine - ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA FEBRUARY 1917

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Teaser chapter

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF KATE FURNIVALL

  The Girl from Junchow

  “An engrossing adventure that sweeps readers in lush waves of drama and romance.”

  —Library Journal

  “Furnivall deftly evokes the details of a bygone era.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Red Scarf

  “This romantic confection can make a reader shiver with dread for the horrors visited on the two heroines imprisoned in a labor camp and quiver with anticipation for their happy endings. Furnivall shows she has the narrative skills to deliver a sweeping historical epic.”

  —Library Journal

  “Furnivall again pinpoints a little-known historical setting and brings it vividly to life through the emotions and insights of her characters. Beautifully detailed descriptions of the land and the compelling characters who move through a surprisingly upbeat plot make this one of the year’s best reads.”

  —Booklist

  The Russian Concubine

  “I read it in one sitting! Not only a gripping love story, but a novel that captures the sights, smells, hopes, and desires of Russia at the dawn of the twentieth century, and pre-Revolutionary China, so skillfully that readers will feel they are there.”

  —Kate Mosse

  “The kaleidoscopic intensity of British writer Kate Furnivall’s debut novel, The Russian Concubine, compellingly transports us back to 1928 and across the globe to the city of Junchow in northern China... Lydia is an endearing character, a young woman with pluck and determination... With artistry, Furnivall weaves a main plot that hinges on Lydia’s love affair with Chang An Lo, a Chinese youth who is a dedicated Communist at a time when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists are gaining ground... Furnivall’s novel is an admirable work of historical fiction.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “Furnivall vividly evokes Lydia’s character and personal struggles against a backdrop of depravity and corruption.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The wonderfully drawn and all-too-human characters struggle to survive in a world of danger and bewildering change... caught between cultures, ideologies—and the growing realization that only the frail reed of love is strong enough to withstand the destroying winds of time.”

  —Diana Gabaldon

  “This stunning debut brings the atmosphere of 1920s China vividly to life.... Furnivall draws an excellent portrait of this distant time and place.”

  —Historical Novels Review

  Also by the author

  THE RUSSIAN CONCUBINE

  THE RED SCARF

  THE GIRL FROM JUNCHOW

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2010 by Kate Furnivall

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Furnivall, Kate.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18813-2

  1. Young women—Russia (Federation)—Saint Petersburg—Fiction. 2. Aristocracy (Social class)—Russia (Federation)—Saint Petersburg—Fiction. 3. Saint Petersburg (Russia)—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Jewel of Saint Petersburg.

  PR6116.U76J48 2010

  823’.92—dc22

  2010012308

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Carole and Wendy

  with love

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply grateful to Jackie Cantor for her patience and humor while bringing this book through its birth pangs, and to all her team at Berkley, especially Pam Barricklow, a true miracle worker. Many thanks also to Amy Schneider for her impressive skill in polishing the manuscript.

  Brilliant thanks to my agent, Teresa Chris, for her constant guidance, as perceptive as ever, and to Patty Moobrugger for her support.

  My gratitude also to Elena Shifrina for her enthusiastic assistance with research and the Russian language, and to Susan Clark for her musical advice. I am indebted to Marian Churchward for transforming my scrawl into a readable manuscript and for sharing my chocolate biscuits.

  Huge thanks to my husband, Norman, for his encouragement and understanding, and especially for his cool ideas.

  One

  TESOVO, RUSSIA JUNE 1910

  VALENTINA IVANOVA DID NOT INTEND TO DIE. NOT HERE. Not now. Not like this. With dirty feet and tangled hair and her life barely started. She looked down at her fingers in the fuzzy green gloom of the forest and was surprised to see them so steady. Inside she was shaking.

  She always paid attention to fingers rather than faces because they told so much more. People remembered to guard their faces. They forgot their hands. He
r own were small, though strong and supple from all the hours of piano playing, but what use was that now? For the first time she understood what real danger does to the human mind, as flat white fear froze the coils of her brain.

  She could run. Or she could hide. Or she could stay where she was, molded to the trunk of a silver birch, and let them find her.

  Dark figures were flitting silently from tree to tree, swallowed by the sullen vastness of the forest around her. She couldn’t see them now, couldn’t hear them, yet she knew they were there. They seemed to vanish like beetles into the bark, invisible and untraceable, but each time she flicked her head suddenly to one side or the other, she caught their movement at the corner of her eye. A trail of air, thin and secretive. A shift of light. A break in the twilight of the forest floor.

  Who were these people? They carried rifles, but they didn’t look like hunters. What hunters wore black hoods? What hunters had face masks with narrow slits for eyes and a jagged hole for a mouth?

  She shivered. She wasn’t willing to die.

  Her feet were bare. She’d kicked off her shoes after the long gallop up the slope through the fields. The sky was still dark when she’d crept out of bed. She’d ignored the hairpins and the buckles, the gloves and the hat, all the paraphernalia that her mother insisted a young lady must wear at all times outdoors. At seventeen, she was old enough now to make her own choices. So she’d pulled a light sleeveless dress over her head, sneaked out of the house, saddled up Dasha and come up here to her favorite spot on her father’s country estate. She’d plunged into the dark somber fringe of the forest from where she loved to watch the dawn rise over Tesovo.

  Her bare toes relished the black earth, moist as treacle. The wind had whipped her long dark hair in a fan across her cheeks and twined it around her neck. There was a freedom up here that loosened something inside her, something that had been wound too tight. It was always the same when the family left St. Petersburg and arrived in Tesovo for the drowsy months of summer and the long white nights when the sun scarcely bothered to drop below the horizon.

  That was until she saw the rifles.

  Men in hoods. All in black and moving with stealth through the shadowy world of the forest. Sweat pooled in the hollow of her back as she dodged behind a tree. She heard a murmur of blurred voices, nothing more, and for a while she waited, willing them to leave. But only when the crimson dawn drew a line like a trail of blood between the trees did the men suddenly spread out, vanishing completely, and Valentina felt her heart thump in panic.

  A whisper? Was that a whisper behind her?

  She spun around. Peered into the shadows but could see no one.

  A moment later a shape flicked. Dark and quick, off to one side. Another directly ahead. They were circling her. How many? She sank down into the dense mist that rose from the ground and, crouching low, she started to run through the thick undergrowth. Thin gray ropes of mist coiled around her ankles and fronds reached for her face, but she didn’t stop until she almost crashed into a pair of legs crossing an animal trail in front of her. She froze. In her leafy cavern under the ferns on the forest floor she didn’t breathe. The legs paused, her terrified gaze fixed on a cloth patch that was badly sewn on the knee of the trousers, but then they moved on. She jinked to her left and scuttled farther. If she could find the edge of the forest where her horse was tethered, she could...

  The blow came from nowhere. Knocked her flat on her back. She lay sprawled on the damp earth but struck out at the hand that seized her shoulder, sinking teeth into its wrist. Bone jarred on her teeth but she bit harder and tasted blood. The hand abruptly released its grip with a curse and she bounded to her feet, but a heavy swinging slap cracked against her jaw and sent her crashing into a tree, cheek first.

  “She’s over here!” a deep voice yelled.

  Valentina tried to run. Her head was spinning but she saw the second slap coming and dropped to one knee. She heard her attacker’s hand snap as it smacked into the trunk instead and a bellow of rage. Her feet were up and running, but the earth wouldn’t keep still. It was swaying under her, merging with the gray mist and flaring into flames each time she crossed a streak of sunlight.

  “Stop her!”

  “Shit! Dermo! Put a bullet in her.”

  A bullet?

  The sound of a bullet rattling into the breech of a rifle ripped into her mind. She jerked behind a tree and saw her hands quivering uncontrollably on the peeling bark.

  “Wait!” she called out.

  Silence. The noise of bodies crashing through the forest ceased.

  “Wait!” she called again.

  “Get out here where we can see you.”

  “No bullets?”

  A voice laughed at her, an angry sound. “No bullets.”

  They hadn’t fired at her yet. Maybe they couldn’t risk the noise of shots. In the countryside sound travels far. She tried to swallow, but her throat was raw. These men weren’t playing games. Whatever it was they were doing, she had disturbed them at it and they weren’t going to let her just walk away. She had to talk to them.

  “Hurry up! Bistro!” the angry voice shouted.

  Valentina’s heart stopped in her chest as she stepped clear of the tree.

  THERE WERE FIVE OF THEM. FIVE MEN, FIVE RIFLES. ONLY one, the tallest figure, had his rifle slung loosely over his shoulder as if he didn’t expect to use it. The black masked faces stared blankly back at her, and her skin crawled at the sight of them.

  They didn’t put a bullet in her. That was a start.

  “It’s just a girl,” one scoffed.

  “Quick as a bloody rabbit, though.”

  Three of them moved nearer. She tensed, up on her toes, ready to run.

  “Don’t look so fierce, girl, we’re just...”

  “Get away from me.”

  “No need to be unfriendly.”

  “You’re trespassing on my father’s land,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound like hers.

  “The land of Russia,” one of the hoods growled, “belongs to the people of Russia. You stole it from us.”

  Chyort! Revolutionaries. The word swelled in her head, crushing all other thoughts. Stories circulated throughout the salons of St. Petersburg about men like this, about how they intended to seize control of Russia and kill off all the ruling classes. She would be just the beginning.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  A loose lecherous chuckle came from the one closest to her. “Enjoying the view.”

  She felt her cheeks flush. Her thin muslin dress was plastered to her body where sweat and sodden foliage had streaked the material. Defensively she looped her arms in front of her but shook her hair back from her face in a gesture of defiance. The three loomed closer, and one moved behind her to cut off her retreat. Caging her. She breathed warily. She couldn’t see their faces behind their black hoods, but she could tell by the speed of their rangy limbs and the eagerness in their voices that they were young. The other two men seemed slightly older, more solidly built, and kept themselves farther away across the break in the trees, murmuring to each other in low tones. She couldn’t tell from their masks whether they watched her, but the taller of them was clearly the one in authority.

  Why were they here in Tesovo? What were they planning? She had to get away, had to warn her father. But two of the young men started shouldering each other, jostling like jackals for the spoils.

  “Who are you?” she asked, to shift their thoughts from herself.

  “We are the true voice of Russia.”

  “If that’s so, your voices should be heard in the Duma, our parliament, not by me in a forest clearing. What use is that?”

  “I can think of one use,” the stockiest of the three responded. He touched her breast with the tip of his rifle.

  She knocked it fiercely to one side. “You may claim the land,” she hissed, “but don’t think you can claim me.”

  His two companions burst out into coarse
laughter, but he yanked his belt from his waist and wound one end around his fist, swinging the buckle threateningly. “Bitch! Suka!”

  Valentina’s heart slid into her throat. She could smell his anger on him, sour in the fresh morning air.

  “Please.” She addressed the tall man among the trees. There was a stillness about him that frightened her even more than the unfocused energy of his men. “Please,” she said, “control them.”

  The man stared back at her from within the dark folds of his hood, slowly shook his head, and walked away into the forest. For a moment she panicked and her hands clenched together to stop them shaking. Yet it seemed that he’d left instructions because the man to whom he’d been talking pointed abruptly to the one standing behind her.

  “You,” he said. “Deal with her. The rest of you, follow me.”

  Deal with her.

  They were well trained, she’d give them that. The angry one with his belt in his fist strutted away at once with no comment, the other alongside him. Behind her the solitary figure shifted his rifle purposefully and shuffled his homemade boots in the damp earth.

  “Sit,” he ordered.

  She thought about it.

  “Sit,” he said again, “or I will make you.”

  She sat.

  AN HOUR PASSED, MAYBE MORE. VALENTINA LOST TRACK OF time. Her limbs ached and her head cramped. Each time she attempted to move or to speak, her guard made a sound of disgust behind her and jammed the metal tip of his rifle into whichever part of her anatomy took his fancy: her ribs, her shoulder, an arm. Worst was the nape of her neck.

  But he didn’t shoot her. She clung to that faint thread of hope.

  What were the others doing? The question ricocheted around inside her skull, splitting her thoughts into a thousand answers.

  They could be thieves. She hoped so fiercely that they were here to rob her father’s house that she almost convinced herself it was true. Here to steal the antique paintings, the gold statues, the Oriental carvings, her mother’s jewels. It had been tried before, so why not again? But what thieves would wait till daylight? What thieves were stupid enough to rob a house when the servants were up and about?