City of Silence (City of Mystery) (24 page)

“Tell
me, Sir,” she was saying.  “From what you have seen so far, do you prefer the
ladies of St. Petersburg to those of London?”  It was obvious what answer she
expected.  

“The
ladies here tonight are dazzling,” Trevor assured her, which was true enough in
its way. The light bouncing from some of them was enough to make a man avert
his eyes in fear of blindness.  “Tell me, who among us is considered to be the
greatest beauty of the court?”  Her plump lips immediately pushed into a pout
and he hastened to add “Besides you, of course.  I realize I have been most
fortunately seated.”

Good
God, but he was bad at this.  The woman hesitated, as if wondering how long she
should punish him for his small social slip, but quickly relented.  They had
not yet received the first course of what would likely be a laboriously long
dinner; she seemed to decide that there was no need to alienate her traveling
companion so quickly in the journey, for her pout gave way to a smile and she
leaned forward to whisper in his ear.  With this gesture, the egg-shaped ruby wedged
between her ample cleavage all but threatened to roll out onto the table and
Trevor tried not to gape.  He had been taught to staunchly ignore this part of
a woman’s anatomy, no matter how temptingly it might be presented, but it
seemed this was but yet another way in which they did things differently in
Russia.  Given the calculating manner in which his partner’s breasts were
arranged, he feared it might be ruder to ignore them, rather like refusing to
salute a flag.

She
whispered several names in his ear that meant nothing, twisting and pointing at
various tables as she did so.  Trevor noted that all of the women she indicated
as beauties had a similar round-faced large-eyed appearance, making them seem a
succession of rather vapid dolls.  The Romanov court apparently appreciated a
most specific type of feminine beauty.  But with the last name, Tatiana Orlov,
she directed his gaze toward yet another small, blonde woman and this time Trevor
was given pause.  On one level, Tatiana was much like the others.  On another
level, she was extraordinary, with dimples and heavily-lashed eyes and cheeks
which glowed without benefit of rouge.  She was what the others wish to look
like, Trevor thought.  She is the prototype they aspire to, the way jewelers
cut glass in a doomed attempt to emulate diamonds.

“You
like her?” his companion asked sharply.

 He
had evidently given himself away, so there was no need to lie.

“She
is beautiful.”

The
woman shrugged, and her ruby rose and fell.  “Her birth was common.”

As
was mine, Trevor thought, raising a glass of champagne to his lips and smiling
apologetically at his companion.  At times like this he often pondered what
throws of chance had brought him to these grand and foreign places, so far from
the simple village of his youth.  Back then he had often announced to his
schoolfellows that when he was a man he would go to the city, and they had all jeered
at his boast.  By “the city,” he had of course meant London.  A portrait of the
much-younger Victoria had hung on the wall of his schoolhouse, a map of England
beside her, and this was as far as Trevor’s mind could expand.   If anyone had
suggested he would someday find himself in France or Russia, serving Her
Majesty on missions of intrigue, he would not have deemed such a thing
possible.  The life of the man had exceeded the dreams of the boy, a state of
being which may sound marvelous, but which actually had left him adrift, unsure
of what to hope for next.  He wondered if Tatiana Orlov, raised from her own
humble past to become one of the acknowledged beauties of the Romanov court,
ever felt the same way.

The
first course, thank heaven, was finally being served.  Not by the Cossacks,
whom Trevor thought might double as footmen, but instead by a host of servants
in full livery.  They swarmed the tables with serving dishes while the Cossacks
remained farther back, lining the walls, where evidently they would remain for
untold hours at military attention.  As the tureens of soup were circulated
around the table, Trevor’s dining companion drained her champagne glass and
then – or could he have imagined this? – winked at him.

From
there, the procession of dishes was rapid enough to confuse a scholar and the
wines were potent and plentiful enough to knock a gourmand to the floor.  At
one point, an entire fawn, his legs curled beneath him, his eyes bright and
trusting, was carried in on a great silver platter and deposited on the head
table between the Tsar and the Queen.  This grand entrance was meant to signal
the arrival of the venison course - the seventh or perhaps the eighth, for it
was impossible to keep count in the face of such an onslaught.  The one thing
that Trevor did note was that the manners of the imperial family and their
guests were growing steadily more appalling as the dinner progressed.  The men
drank at a pace which could only be described as businesslike, and talked far
too loudly, sometimes shouting over the ladies seated between them.  Down the
table, the young Grand Duchess Xenia had done nothing but complain that the Tchaikovsky
ball had delayed their normal summer progress to the shore and the pleasures
which awaited her there.  Trevor had no doubt that she would not have tempered
her displeasure with this inconvenience even if she had been seated beside the
composer himself.  His own dining companion had just sucked a clam from its
shell with all the finesse of an East End whore and now sat gazing at him in
the manner of one who has seen the worst of the world and fervently hopes to
see it soon again.

“Our
ultimate aim, of course, is to unite the two shores of our land,” the young
Nicholas was saying, with such palpable enthusiasm that it rang out to all
within earshot.  Trevor, with yet one more smile of apology at his dinner mate,
had to incline his head and strain to hear him.  With his entire table in
respectful attendance, Nicholas went on to extol the virtues of the
half-completed Trans-Siberian Railway.  To hear the young tsesarevich speak,
you would think that no previous nation had ever struck upon the idea of
building a single continuous track from one end of their country to the other,
cutting across deserts, rivers, mountains, prairies, and whatever else it found
along the way.  Trevor suspected the project was in fact a mimic of the famous railways
of the American west and wondered if the Trans-Siberian system, upon its
conclusion, would have a similar impact.  It seemed that if Russia had truly found
a way to create reliable transport from the European-influenced St. Petersburg
all the way to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, taking in Moscow, Siberia, and
Mongolia along the way, then Russia would be…

Unstoppable.

The
word struck Trevor like a thud to the chest.  As it now stood, Russia’s massive
size could be deemed as much a disadvantage as an advantage, rendering the country
difficult to govern with borders far too expansive to defend.  But what would happen
if the country did find a means of marshalling its staggering wealth of
resources?  If so, they truly would become another America – so vast and rich
that no nation in Europe could begin to match their collective power. Trevor
was not sure the civilized world could handle a second America.  It had barely
survived the first one.

“And
I shall tell them so the next time the committee meets…” Nicholas was saying. 
He trailed off at this point, betraying himself by glancing nervously in the direction
of his father.  It was evident that Nicholas had not yet found a seat on this much-acclaimed
Trans-Siberian committee, and was thus not yet in a position to tell anyone
anything.  But it was just as evident that he fervently wished to be.  The boy
has a desire to matter, Trevor thought.  If not on this committee, then on some
other.  He needs something to give him a voice, a role, and a man’s place at
the table of power.  Alix had abandoned any pretense of conversation with the
gentleman seated on her other side and was facing Nicky, smiling and nodding to
indicate she was listening to his every word.

But,
unfortunately for the tsesarevich, so was his father.

“Committee?”
the tsar boomed.  His voice was low and deep, pitched to the timbre of a cannon
and it had the unlucky effect of halting conversation all around him so that
his words to his son thundered down from the elevated table to those on the
floor.  At least a third of the room had ceased conversation, making Trevor
wonder how on earth the tsar had been able to hear Nicky’s words in the din. 
But perhaps the acoustics of the banquet hall, like those of the theater, were
contrived to benefit people seated in certain locations.

“You
are not ready for the Trans-Siberian committee,” Alexander called out to his
son, in the grand and empty silence.  “I shall have a set of toy trains sent to
your room instead.”

And
then he boomed with laughter, the sound crueler than his words, and Trevor
dropped his gaze back down to his plate, fairly certain everyone in earshot was
doing the same thing.   No matter what their nationality or politics, Trevor
suspected they were all discomforted to see a young man so utterly humiliated
in the presence of the woman he loved.

Voices
slowly entered back into the void and conversation resumed.  Trevor gulped from
his glass and stole a sideways look to the table where Nicholas was sitting – silent,
but with an odd look of forbearance on his face.  Emma was right, Trevor
thought.  He has not been trained in politics at all, not even the politics of
the dinner table, or else he would not have risked such a childish brag within
earshot of his father.  Nicholas had deep dark eyes and a kind and gentle
expression.  He has the innocent look of a faun, Trevor thought, and we can all
see what happens to fauns around here.

“I
am ready for a grand ball,” said Xenia.  “A silly little dinner like this is a
dreadful bore, but a ball…”

And
here she drifted off, seemingly unaware of how her words might sound to the
British guests, articulating what had previously only been hinted: that the
arrival of Victoria, Alix, and their coterie was an occasion worth only a bit
more fuss at a silly little dinner which had already been planned.  The
possibility that the Queen of England might be forced to offer Russia yet
another granddaughter was certainly not an event worthy of a grand ball.

“The
Tchaikovsky is coming up soon enough,” the man beside her said to Xenia, with a
wearied air.  He had evidently had a long night.

“Good,
for I am bored,” she said.  “I don’t like the Winter Palace in the summer.” 
She chattered on about the glories of the Palace in cold weather- grand balls
for Christmas, sledding on the hills or ice skating on the Neva- and Trevor
reflected that the Romanov family, like most of the royal houses of Europe, were
hardly a bevy of intellectuals.  They liked to talk about the events of their
days, but their days never varied.  They liked to talk about their relatives,
but their relatives were all alike.  Irony was lost on the majority of them, as
was humor, unless you counted vulgar jokes.  Belches and farts and the like and
they did not like to debate ideas, for to enter into a debate was to concede
that there might be more than one rational way to look at a matter, and this
was something that royals as a species were loath to accept.  As Xenia prattled
on to her captive audience about toboggans and snowmen, Trevor let his gaze once
again move to Alix and Nicky.   

“Religion,”
Alix was saying, “is not a ring that one can slip on and off.”

Oh
dear, thought Trevor.  She sounds so serious, so pious, so much the exception
to the rule I have just established.  The next thing we know she will be
lecturing everyone on the meaning of Paradise Lost.  She already has the wrong
clothes and she furthermore distinguishes herself as an intellectual, her
position at court is fully doomed.  Bloody slabs of venison were being
deposited on each plate along the table.

“Of
course not,” Nicholas was responding.  “I quite agree.  I agree with…I agree,
of course, with everything you say.”

They
could be such a nice young couple, Trevor thought.  The boy a little timid, too
eager to please, too desperate to be liked.  The girl tense and solemn, pitched
forward with the weight of her unaccustomed jewels.   If they lived in another
time and place, if they were not required to become Nicholas and Alexandria,
and could remain just Alix and Nicky… He might make a great success somewhere
as a greengrocer or a bookkeeper, perhaps a chemist.  She would be a devoted
mother, the sort who read to her children each night as they drifted to sleep. 
They’d be lovely people to have as neighbors, a family you smile and tip your
hat to on a Sunday stroll.

They
would be fine, Trevor thought, just fine if they were average people.

Trevor
cut a bite of venison and raised it to his mouth.   It was delicious,
stunningly so, with the lusciousness of the flesh unchanged even when he looked
into the tranquil brown eyes of the faun centerpiece on the high table.  What
were they all to make of this, of this great dinner with its dozens of hidden
implications, not the least of which was that it was not truly so great?   That
the imperial family was welcoming them with a yawn and not a fanfare, and
beyond the wine-dulled drone of conversation swirling over the tables Trevor’s
eyes moved to the double doors opening into the portico and the glow beyond. 
It was late, or perhaps early, but what difference could it make?  No matter
what the hour or what the day, the sky remained the same.  The sun visible for twenty
hours on this particular date on the calendar.  Sunset fading to a milky shade
of pearl which would last until morning and then, when one looked to the east,
you would see the true miracle of the summer solstice:  That before the light
of the old order had fully departed, a new day had already dawned.