The Jewel of St. Petersburg Read online

  THE HOUSE LAY SILENT, THE ROOMS DARKENED. EVERYONE moved on tiptoe and spoke in low whispers, the way they would around the dead. Valentina wanted to throw open the curtains and shout, She’s still alive! But she kept quiet, ignoring the ache that crippled her chest, and sat close beside her mother on the chaise longue in the drawing room.

  They were past words. Locked inside themselves, waiting for the doctor’s heavy tread to descend the stairs. The room was hot, the sun straining to creep between the curtains, but Valentina remained cold deep in the center of her bones. Her eyes followed her mother’s delicate fingers, watched them crouch in the lap of her lavender morning gown, hooked around each other, twisting and digging, tugging at the lace cuff on her sleeve, while the rest of her slight figure sat quiet. It upset Valentina more than the expression of despair on her mother’s face or the two fierce bursts of color on the white skin of her cheeks. Elizaveta Ivanova was a person who believed in restraint at all times. To see her hands so out of control made the world feel unsafe.

  “How much longer?” Valentina murmured.

  “The doctor has been up there too long. It’s a bad sign.”

  “No, it means he’s still helping her. He hasn’t given up.” She tried to smile. “You know how stubborn Katya is.”

  Elizaveta Ivanova gave one dry harsh sob, then silenced herself. She had been brought up as part of that breed of women who regarded a wife’s role in life as being a decorative and largely voiceless adornment to her husband, to look attractive and well mannered on his arm at all times, and to produce children for him, one of whom was expected to be a boy to continue the bloodline. In this latter area she had failed. She had given birth to two healthy girls but seemed unable to forgive herself the lack of a son, viewing it as a punishment from God for some unknown mortal sin. Now this curse on her younger daughter.

  Despite her mother’s daily routine of social engagements, Valentina sometimes thought her lonely. She slipped an arm around her in a rare gesture of physical contact between them and was astonished by the warmth of her body. Her own skin was chill as marble. Even now her mother’s luxuriant golden hair was elegantly dressed on top of her head and she sat rigidly upright inside her armor of French silk and lace, of amethyst brooch and whalebone stays. It occurred to Valentina for the first time that maybe her mother already knew how dangerous a place the world was, and that was why she never relaxed. Security police were scouring the fields and forest, but so far had found no men with rifles.

  “Mama,” she whispered softly, “if the revolutionaries hadn’t kept me in the forest, I’d have been back here long before Katya woke, she’d have been with me down at the creek instead of wandering into Papa’s...”

  Elizaveta Ivanova turned her head to inspect her daughter, her nostrils flared, her eyes almost colorless as if their usual deep blue pigment had been washed away by hidden tears. “You are not to blame, Valentina.” She held her daughter’s hand in hers.

  “Papa thinks I am.”

  “Your father is angry. He needs someone to blame.”

  “He could blame the hooded men in the forest.”

  “Ah.” Elizaveta Ivanova released a long sad sigh. “That would be too easy. Be patient with him, my dear. He has more on his mind than you know.”

  Valentina shuddered. Nothing, she was certain, would be easy from now on.

  THE BEDROOM WAS STIFLING. WHAT WERE THEY TRYING to do to her sister? Suffocate her? A fire burned in the grate although it was a hot summer’s day, the curtains were drawn shut, and a dim light cast shadows that to Valentina felt like secretive figures hiding in the gloom. She had been allowed five minutes, that was all, and only because she had pleaded so hard. Immediately she knelt beside the bed, rested her arms on the embroidered silk counterpane, and balanced her chin on her hand, so that her eyes were level with her sister’s.

  “Katya,” she whispered. “Katya, I’m sorry.”

  The face on the pillow tugged at her heart. It was Katya as she would be in fifty years’ time, her skin and her hair gray and lifeless, her lips thin, drawn into a tight line of pain. Valentina gently kissed her cheek and smelled the dirt on her. Once when she was young, one of the gardeners had dug out a rats’ nest from under a shed, and she and Katya had watched wide-eyed when the small furry bodies squealed as they fought to escape. They had given off a rank musky odor that had stuck in Valentina’s nostrils. That was what Katya’s skin smelled of now.

  She didn’t know if Katya was awake. Conscious or unconscious. They said the doctor had given her something. What did that mean? Morphine? How could her precious blond sister who was always bursting with laughter and energy be hiding under this little old lady’s skin? Tentatively Valentina touched the dusty arm that lay outside the cover, and it felt like a stranger’s, gritty and rough. Where were the satin-smooth limbs that loved to swim in the creek and pull down branches from the willows to build silvery dens to hide in?

  A large tear splashed down onto her sister’s arm and startled Valentina. She didn’t know she was crying. She rested her cheek against her sister’s hot arm, and it felt like a furnace under her skin.

  “I, Valentina Ivanova, caused this,” she murmured under her breath, so that her ears as well as her mind would bear witness to the words. She scraped away her tears and said loudly, “Katya, it’s me, Valentina.”

  No response.

  She kissed her sister’s filthy hair. “Can you hear me?”

  No response.

  “Please, Katya.”

  A gray-gold eyelash fluttered.

  “Katya!”

  A slit of blue showed in one eye.

  Valentina leaned closer. “Hello, privet, my sweet.”

  The slit widened a fraction. Katya’s lips moved, but no sound emerged.

  Valentina placed her ear to her sister’s lips and felt a faint whisper of breath. “What is it? Are you in pain? The doctor has...”

  “I’m frightened.”

  Valentina’s throat closed. She kissed the soft cheek. “Don’t be frightened, Katya. I’m here. I’ll look after you and keep you safe. For the rest of our lives.” She squeezed her sister’s small hand and saw a slight movement at the side of her tight bruised mouth. A smile.

  “Promise me,” Katya breathed.

  “I promise. On my life.”

  Slowly Katya’s eyes fell shut and the narrow slit of blue vanished. But the edge of the smile stayed, and Valentina cradled her limp hand until they came and made her leave.

  Three

  ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA DECEMBER 1910

  GIRLS, MESDEMOISELLES, TODAY IS A GREAT HONOR FOR OUR school. A day to remember. I expect the best from each of you. Today you must shine brighter than...”

  The headmistress stopped in mid flight. Her neatly drawn eyebrows rose in disgust. The girls held their breath, waiting to see on which wretched creature her wrath would fall. In her somber dress with its high neck and cameo brooch, Madame Petrova was marching up and down in front of the benches in the grand hall of the Ekaterininsky Institute, eyeing each pupil with the unbending scrutiny of a general reviewing his troops.

  “Nadia,” she said crisply.

  Valentina’s heart sank for her friend, who had dropped ink on her clean pinafore.

  “Sit up straight, girl. Just because you are in the back row doesn’t mean you can slouch. Do you want the broom handle tied to your back?”

  “No, Madame.” Nadia straightened her shoulders but kept her hands discreetly over her soiled pinafore.

  “Aleksandra, remove that curl from your cheek.”

  She glided farther along the ranks.

  “Emilya, put your feet together, you are not a horse. Valentina, stop fiddling at once!”

  Valentina flushed and stared down at her fingers. They were drumming on her knees, desperate to keep warm. She couldn’t play with cold fingers. But she folded them obediently on her lap. Her heart was hammering. It was always like this before a performance, but she had practiced the Nocturn
e till it accompanied her through her night dreams, the way the sound of screaming horses still did. She hadn’t ridden a horse since the day of the explosion and had no intention of ever doing so again, but still the sound of them wouldn’t leave her, however hard she thundered across the piano keys.

  “Valentina.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “Remember who you are performing for today. The tsar himself.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  This time she would play Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat better than ever before.

  JENS FRIIS GLANCED AT THE DOMED CLOCK ON THE WALL. The afternoon was crawling past as though it had frostbite in its toes, and he was tempted to yawn.

  He stretched out his legs and shifted position with irritation. He was tired of the interminable poems and songs, as well as uncomfortable on an absurd chair that was not built for someone like himself with limbs like a giraffe’s. Worse, he was annoyed with Countess Serova for dragging him to this schoolgirl frivolity when he was short of time. He needed to study the blueprints of the new construction that had only come in this morning and, damn it, it was cold here in this hall. How on earth did the poor wretches stand it? On the benches arranged along the wall, the rows of pupils sat stiff and upright in their dark frocks with white capes and pinafores, like delicate snow carvings.

  His gaze moved dutifully to the institutka who was singing. Pleasant enough voice, nothing special, but the song was dull, one of those tedious German lieder he loathed, the ones that go on forever. He glanced at the door and wondered what the chances were of escape.

  “Jens,” Countess Natalia Serova whispered next to him. “Behave.”

  “I fear such elitist delights are above my churlish brain.”

  She gave him a glare from steady blue eyes, then turned away. He could smell her perfume. Most likely from Paris, like her hat, a frivolous confection of silk and feathers that made him smile. Her long fitted coat in the palest of greens showed off her girlish figure though he guessed she must be about thirty, and emeralds glittered at her ears and throat. She had exquisite taste, no doubt about that. As the son of a Danish printer, Jens had grown up in Copenhagen with the stink of ink forever in his nostrils, but now at twenty-seven years old he was learning to appreciate the finer fragrances on parade in St. Petersburg.

  “You are very provoking. Listen to Maria,” she murmured under her breath.

  Ah, so this songbird was Maria, the countess’s niece. Vaguely he recalled her from the time the countess had dragged him to a concert here two years ago, when Jens had the honor of meeting Tsar Nicholas for the first time. Countess Natalia Serova had introduced him, he must not forget that. He owed her much, even if her husband did make good use in return of Jens’s skills as an engineer to do work on their estate.

  This time Tsar Nicholas was sitting bolt upright in a high-backed chair in the center of the hall, and it was impossible to tell whether he was bored or amused. The muscles of his face were so rigidly well trained. He was a small man and hid his weak chin behind a prominent chestnut beard, in the same way that he hid his slight frame inside a series of bulky military uniforms designed to impress. Today he was resplendent in a peacock blue jacket weighed down by an abundance of medals and gold braid.

  Jens was not the only one who believed that Tsar Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov was the wrong man in the wrong job, unlike his big brash bullying father, Tsar Alexander III, a man who had stood six feet six inches in his bare feet and thought nothing of behaving like the iron fist of God. But now, more than ever before, Russia was in danger of slitting its own throat, in desperate need of a leader of wisdom and strength.

  “Bravo,” the tsar called out. “Well done, Mademoiselle Maria.”

  Applause burst out around the hall. The niece had finished, thank God. Jens breathed a sigh of relief because now he could leave and get back to work. But a grand piano that dominated the far end of the room suddenly stirred into life and music started to flow throughout the high-ceilinged room. Jens groaned inwardly. It was something by Chopin, one of his least favorite composers, always so plaintive, so full of despair, whining in your ear like a cat in heat.

  He glanced at the pianist and saw that she was a slight young creature with a mane of dense dark hair pulled back from her face by a black hairband. About sixteen, he’d guess, maybe seventeen. She wore the Ekaterininsky Institute uniform and should have looked as shapeless and anonymous as all the other girls. But she didn’t. There was something about her that caused his eyes to linger, something in the way her hands moved with hypnotic grace. As if they were part of the music itself.

  She had small strong fingers that flowed over the keys, connecting to something he couldn’t see, something that was part of her private world. The music soared, rising in a minor chord and flooding his senses with its beauty, then without warning, when he was totally unprepared, ripped his heart out. He closed his eyes, aware of the music alive inside him. Of its notes touching places within him, secret corners. With an effort of will he forced open his eyes and studied the girl who could transform music into such a weapon.

  Her body didn’t sway dramatically on the stool. Just her hands. And her head. They moved as if they belonged to the music, rather than to her body. Her skin was palest ivory and her face almost expressionless except for her eyes. They were huge and dark, full of an emotion that to Jens looked closer to fury than rapture. Where had a girl so young found such powerful feelings? As if she drew them in with each breath.

  Finally the music sighed to an end, and the girl hung her head. Her dark hair curtained her face from view, and she placed her hands quietly in her lap. Only one telltale tremor shook her spine, and then silence filled the hall. Jens looked at the tsar. Tears were rolling unchecked down Nicholas’s face. Slowly he raised his imperial hands and began to clap, and immediately applause echoed around the hall. Jens looked again at the young pianist. She hadn’t moved but her head was turned to one side and her luminous dark eyes were directed straight at him. If it weren’t too absurd to be true, he’d have sworn she was angry with him.

  “Mademoiselle Valentina,” the tsar said, his voice thick with tears, “thank you. Merci bien. That was a magnificent performance. Unforgettable. You must come and play for my wife and my dear daughters when they are next at the Winter Palace.”

  The girl rose from the stool and dropped a deep curtsy. “It would be a great honor,” she said.

  “Pozdravlyayu. Congratulations, my dear girl. You will be a great pianist.”

  For the first time she smiled, “Spasibo, Your Majesty. You are too kind.”

  There was something about the way she murmured it that startled Jens. He almost laughed out loud, but the tsar seemed not to notice the faint rustle of mockery in her words.

  “So,” Jens’s companion whispered. “At least you enjoyed the Chopin, if not the singing.”

  Jens turned to Countess Serova. “I did.”

  “Friis, good heavens, man, what are you doing here?”

  It was Tsar Nicholas. He was strutting over to his entourage to stretch his legs before the next performance. Everyone rose to their feet. He was considerably shorter than Jens and had a habit of rocking up and down on his toes. The women ruffled their finery in greeting and the men ducked their heads in acknowledgment of his attention.

  “Friis,” Tsar Nicholas continued, “you’re not here to flirt with the girls, I hope.”

  “No, Your Majesty, I am not. I’m here as a guest of Countess Serova.”

  “Shouldn’t you be hard at work? That’s what I expect of you, you know. Not to parade in front of Petersburg’s elite young ladies.”

  Jens bowed, a crisp click of his heels and a dip of his head. “Then I shall take my leave.”

  Nicholas’s manner became serious. “You are needed elsewhere, Friis. I can’t afford to waste a good man on”—he waved a jeweled hand at the school hall—“on this frippery.”

  Jens bowed again and turned to leave. As he did so,
he cast one more glance around, seeking out the pianist. She was still watching him. He smiled but she didn’t respond, so he tipped his head to her and walked out of the room. As the door closed behind him he felt as if something of himself still lay on the hall’s polished floorboards. Something he valued.

  JENS!”

  He stopped midstride. “Ah, Countess. As you see, I am in a hurry.”

  “Wait,” she called. Her footsteps echoed along the school’s empty yellow corridor, hurrying to catch up with him. “Jens, I’m sorry. I didn’t intend that rebuke from the tsar to happen.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No. Forgive me.”

  “Countess Serova,” he said, lifting her gloved hand and pressing it to his lips, “there is nothing to forgive.” But his voice was brittle with irony.

  She exhaled sharply. “Don’t be so arrogant, Jens,” she said. “Not with me.”

  She stretched up and placed a kiss full on his mouth. Her lips were soft. Tempting. But Jens stepped away. She gave him a reproachful gaze and walked back the way she had come.

  Damn the woman. Damn her.

  JENS WRAPPED HIS HEAVY RIDING CAPE TIGHTLY AROUND HIS shoulders. The dismal gray mist clung to his clothes and hair and even to his eyelashes. On horseback he drifted like a ghost through the city, over bridges that were illuminated by streetlamps day and night now it was winter. Carriages rattled past unseen in the fog and cars blared their klaxons at each other, while pedestrians kept a firm hold on their purses and wallets. It was a day for pickpockets and thieves.

  The temperatures were harsh this year, harsher than usual in St. Petersburg. The Moika Canal had frozen over and the Neva River disappeared in a deathly pall that swallowed the city. It was a winter of bitter strikes in the factories and of shortages in the food shops. Unrest slid and slithered through the streets, workers gathered on corners and smoked their cheap makhorka cigarettes with resentful fury. Jens heeled his horse into a canter and swung away from the wide boulevards, leaving behind the fashionable Nevsky Prospekt with its sables and its silks.