City of Silence (City of Mystery) (25 page)

Chapter
Sixteen

The
Winter Palace – The Imperial Gardens

June
22, 1889

2:20
PM

“I
trust you did not find my invitation for you to join me in my daily stroll untoward,”
Ella said. “But I wished to speak to you privately.”

“Of
course,” Tom said, as if a summons to an imperial suite was an everyday
event.   This was the second time in three days that a woman had insisted that
they should meet alone and he could only hope this time did not end as badly as
the last.  

“Is
my grandmother well?  I have never known her to travel with a doctor.”

“It’s
a precaution only, I assure you,” Tom said, offering Ella his arm as they
strolled through the small enclosed garden behind her apartments.  She ignored
it.

“I’m
sure the solstice dinner was distressing to her.”

“It
was an interesting evening for everyone present.”

“She
has no intention of allowing Alix to marry Nicky, does she?”

“I
assure you that I am not privy to Her Majesty’s private thoughts.”

Ella
looked at him out of the corner of her eye.  She truly is lovely, Tom thought,
suddenly seeing how Ella might have once been proclaimed the most desirable
princess in Europe.  She’s a bit of a tyrant and a bit of a prig, but God knows
they all are, and as princesses go, she does have a certain fire.

“What
you mean is that you’re too ethical to reveal facts to which you are
undoubtedly privy, which speaks well of you as a private physician.  Tell me,
Tom, is there some sort of doctor-patient confidentiality, just as that which exists
between a person and his solicitor?”

She
was good.  The use of his given name, tossed in so casually, and the belated
decision to take his arm, to turn her profile only slightly more toward him.  Ella
was a woman who had been frequently photographed and painted throughout her
life and she knew her best perspective was this one, neither fully facing the
man nor fully in profile, but somewhere in between.  Yes, just like this, with
her remarkable eyes regarding him from the side.  She was trying to charm him
and despite the fact Tom recognized her tricks – despite the fact he himself
had used similar ones on countless occasions – he was not immune to her
machinations. 

He
smiled. “I would consider it an honor to serve you just as I serve your
grandmother.”

“And
does my grandmother have to know that you are to be…in service to me as well?”

“Of
course not,” he said, with more certainty than he felt.  Where the devil was
this all heading?  She had paused before a rosebush, and therefore he had
paused with her, both of them considering the blossoms before them, the heady
smell of the flowers hovering in the heat.

“What
experience do you have in the practice of obstetrics?”

The
question startled him.  It was the last thing he had expected her to say.

“There
is to be a baby?”

“Not
mine.  I wish you to attend a friend.”

“Where
is this friend?”

“In
her room.  Packing.”

“So
your friend is going somewhere?”  It was a nonsensical question, but the best
he could muster under the circumstances.

“She
will be traveling to the coast.  Or at least she will be, with your help.  And
I intend to go with her.”

“This
conversation is very obscure, Your Imperial Highness.”

“Only
by necessity.  Follow me.”

And
so he did.  Into the building and down the halls, the damn halls.  The never
ending halls.  Later, in the storm-tossed nights which followed excessive
drinking, Tom would sometimes dream of a hell which was very much like the Winter
Palace – an eternal succession of hallways, doubling back upon themselves, collectively
leading nowhere.  Tom and Ella walked through them, their feet sometimes silent
on the islands of carpet and then tapping quietly against the wooden floors
until Ella at last paused in front of a rather ordinary door in a rather
ordinary section of the residential wing of the palace.  Tom casually tilted
his head and tried to take in the sort of details he knew Trevor and the others
would expect to hear upon his return.  Judging by the moderate spacing of the
doors, as well as the pedestrian quality of the artwork on the walls, he could
only conclude that they were in some sort of middle tier of the palace.  Not as
grand as the imperial wings, nor as dreary as the working staff’s rooms, but
somewhere in between.

Ella
rapped once and then turned the knob.  The door swung open.  Evidently they
were expected.

Tom
followed Ella through a sitting room and into a bedroom where a woman was
indeed packing.  One chest stood open on the floor, another was already locked
and strapped on the bed, and her arms were full of dresses destined for a third.

“My
friend, Tatiana Orlov,” Ella said. “And this is Dr. Thomas – do you have a last
name, doctor?”

“Bainbridge,”
Tom said.  Tatiana flushed.

She
had recognized him, just as he recognized her.  She was the same petite blonde
woman he and Emma had found in the theater dressing rooms scurrying away from
the arms of Konstantin Antonovich to hide herself under a pile of costumes. 

“Tatiana
is going to have a child,” Ella said. 

“This
is true?” Tom asked Tatiana, without caring if the question insulted Ella.  The
woman before him was so small, so impossibly slender beneath her laced corset,
that it scarcely seemed possible she was pregnant.  She could not have been
more than two or three months along and women were often still uncertain in
that stage of gestation.

The
woman nodded.  Her expression conveyed nothing about how she felt in the
matter.  She may as well have been agreeing that it was lovely weather.

“She
is going to have a baby…and then, I am going to have a baby,” Ella said. “Do
you understand what I am telling you?”

He
did.  The plan was neither original nor complex.  One woman is carrying a child
that, for whatever reason, she must not have.  Another woman desperately needs
a child that, for whatever reason, she cannot conceive.  And so a friendship
forms between the two, an alliance both unholy and as old as the Bible. 

Tom
turned toward Ella.  “Your husband will accept the baby as his own?”

“Yes. 
More readily than you could ever know.”

His
eyes moved to Tatiana.  “And I assume your own husband is not aware of your
pregnancy?”

Both
women flinched at the word “pregnancy,” as if he had uttered a vulgarity in
their presence, and Tom wondered anew at the peculiar sensitivities of women,
how the two of them could calmly plot the brokering of a human life, each of
them most profoundly duping her husband in the process, but still recoil from
such a simple biological term. 

Tatiana
shook her head.  “Filip has suffered many… many injuries in his service to the
tsar,” she finally said, and he realized this was the first time he had ever
heard her voice.  It was low pitched, out of accord with her delicate
appearance and thus rather thrilling.  He thought back to the scar Rayley had
described on Filip’s chest in the sauna and wondered if Tatiana was implying
that some sort of further unseen damage had rendered her husband sterile.  Tom
could think of no obvious way in which a shot to the torso could create such an
unwelcome complication; if Filip Orlov was unable to father children, syphilis
was a more likely explanation than a wound in the line of duty. 

Of
course, the particulars of how it happened really didn’t matter that much to
the issue at hand.   If Tatiana Orlov believed her husband to be sterile and yet
was currently pregnant, then her situation was dire indeed.

“My
father is dark,” Ella added, “in both hair and complexion.” The remark seemed
bizarrely off the subject until Tom considered the line of argument the women
evidently intended to follow, the argument they were practicing on him.  The
child Tatiana was carrying was almost undoubtedly fathered by Konstantin
Antonovich, and Tom’s mind flashed to the images of the man’s heavy dark hair
and intense almond-shaped eyes, so different in every way from the fair,
startled-looking Romanovs.

“Have
you been ill?” Tom asked Tatiana.

“A
little.  In the morning, just as they say.”

“That’s
a good sign.  Evidence that the pregnancy is well established and will continue.”

She
smiled and nodded with evident relief.  So, despite it all, apparently at least
part of her was happy to be carrying this baby and grateful for his
assurances.  The plan these two intended was madness, madness in every way, but
it was not his place to tell them so.  Tom looked from Tatiana back to Ella. 
“So what do you want from me?” he asked bluntly.  “Her baby is obviously not
due to be born for many months.”

“If
you had a patient who was an expectant mother…” Ella said vaguely. 

“If
you were my patient, you mean,” Tom said.  It was bad form to interrupt royalty
but this was no time to stand on ceremony.

“Precisely,”
said Ella.  “If I were your patient would you advise me to escape the dangers
of the city and spend my confinement in the country?  By the sea, perhaps?”

“Yes
I most certainly would,” Tom said.  It was perhaps the only completely honest
statement which had been uttered in the room since they entered.  “Cities are
full of contagion as a matter of course and I would imagine that St.
Petersburg, which was built on marshland, is worse than most.  Especially in
the summer.  When I was walking in the gardens just this morning I thought I
saw a hummingbird which, on closer inspection, turned out to be a mosquito.”

Tatiana
not only relaxed at this statement but looked almost amused.  Ella, however,
bristled at this slight to her adopted city.

“We
were never meant to summer here,” she said icily.  “We have remained overlong
this year because of the Tchaikovsky ball.”

“I’m
aware of that,” Tom said, his own tone nearly as icy.  He was once again verging
on the edge of rudeness to a woman of rank, but he couldn’t see Ella running to
tattle to her husband or her granny about anything he said in the course of this
particular conversation.  He had always found it an affectation when people used
the words “summer” and “winter” as verbs, and he wondered if Ella, who was
accustomed to decamping to the sea with the first heat of June, had ever
bothered to consider all the citizens of the city, pregnant or not, who were
forced to endure the risk of cholera and malaria year round.  But just as it
was not his job to tell Ella that her plan was mad, nor was it his job to
lecture her on her marital family’s responsibilities to their people.

“I
believe,” he said in a more conciliatory tone, “the question before us is
whether or not a doctor would advise an expectant mother to go to the country
rather than remain in the city, and the answer is yes.  The purity of ocean air
is most palliative, especially when temperatures climb.”

“And
you would say this to my grandmother?  As general advice, that is?”

“Of
course.  But I will not lie to my monarch.  I will not tell your grandmother I
have found you pregnant when I have not.”

“You
do not have to lie,” Ella said, with an impatient shake of her head.  “I will
tell her about the baby myself.  And we shall all leave soon.  Just after the
ball.  Due to the untimely death of my former lady in waiting, I have asked my
sister-in-law if she can spare Tatiana from her own court to enter my service
and she has most kindly agreed.  And so we are an expectant imperial mother and
her loyal attendant traveling to a safe place for the duration of her
confinement.  No one shall find anything odd in it at all.” 

“Who
is this ‘we’ who will leave soon?” Tom asked.  Dear God, she didn’t expect him
to travel with them, did she?

“Tatiana
and I to the coast…” Ella said. 

“And
Konstantin to Paris,” Tatiana said simply.

And
with that Tom saw the whole of the situation.  In giving Ella her child,
Tatiana had bought the safe passage of her lover.  Once he was ensconced in
France, Konstantin would be far beyond the reach of Filip Orlov, or anyone else
inclined to frame him for a triple murder.

“Konstantin
Antonovich is a lucky man,” Tom said.  “He seems to enjoy the most intense
loyalty of all the women in his life.  You are certain that you’re prepared to
do this?”

“He
must never know,” Ella interrupted.  “He doesn’t like for women to lead him. 
Just ask your red-haired friend what he’s like.”  She crossed her arms across
her chest and gave a slight, definitive shudder.  “Russian men are proud,
Siberian men even more so.  He leaves us no choice but to dissemble, for he would
never accept the risks that two women are undertaking to guarantee his safety.”

Tatiana
had resumed packing.  It was impossible to see her face.

“I
need a baby,” Ella said defiantly, as if Tom had uttered some word of protest. 
“Tatiana needs to not have a baby.  Konstantin needs to leave Russia.  But all three
of these problems are easy to rectify if we work together.  We can be, in a
sense, each other’s saviors.  Why do you hesitate?” she added, when Tom did not
answer, but rather continued to watch Tatiana struggling to push an armful of
dresses into the small valise. “Surely you can see that this child will be
given every privilege in life, will have every sort of comfort.”