City of Silence (City of Mystery) (27 page)

“You
know of it?”

The
street before him seemed to shiver, to tremble in the golden light.  Is this
what if felt like to faint?  He had to at least get off his feet before panic
caused him to do something truly foolish, to say something which would bring
down the entire political structure of Europe with a single blast.

“Do
we have time for a drink?” Davy asked.

“There
is always time for a drink, my friend.”

There
were cafes at each corner of the square and they approached the nearest one,
pulling out their chairs with a scrape.  Vlad raised a finger to the bored
waiter, without bothering to ask Davy what he wanted.  Vodka was cheap. 
Plentiful.   The drink of the people and thus the drink of the people’s
champions.  Davy steeled himself for the taste.

“We
were speaking of the ball,” Vlad reminded him.  “And will your Queen be in
attendance?”

 “I
imagine so.”

“And
you?”

“Of
course not.  Among her attendants, I’m the lowest of the low.”

“That’s
good,” Vlad said, nodding to the man absent-mindedly as the drinks were placed
on the table.

“Why
is it good that I shan’t be there?  Is something going to happen?”

“No
one has tried to recruit you in London?”

God. 
Questions and questions from these people, with never an answer. 

“I
have already told you.  The cause in England lags far behind your work here.” 
Inspiration suddenly struck Davy and he sipped the vodka slowly to stall for
time.  I am hardly a match for Vlad in a war of wits, Davy thought, but Mrs.
Kirby was right enough in her description.   He is obsessed with his own self
importance.  “I cannot tell you what my time in St. Petersburg has meant to
me,” Davy said.  “When I return to London I will begin the work myself, modeled
on what I have seen within the Volya.  So anything you can tell me is worth…is
worth a handful of Romanov rubies.”

Vlad
seemed amused.  “What do you mean, begin the work yourself?  There’s no need to
reinvent the wheel.  I’m sure a city the size of London has any number of
existing groups and that they would all be delighted to take you on.  Ask
Cooper for a letter of introduction if you need one, although you most likely
would not.  Your position within the palace makes you an asset.  It can take an
organization years of painstaking work to get a man on the inside and you come
to them with the matter already in hand.”

Davy
rolled his eyes.  “Please.  I’m merely a messenger boy.” 

“And
Yulian was merely a ballet dancer.  The point is that any revolutionary group needs
within its ranks a spy.  Someone on the inside, who can move around the palace
without attracting comment.”  The rim of his glass had a chip and Davy started
to warn him of the fact, but something stopped him.  Vlad was most likely the
sort of man to prefer a glass with a chipped rim.  “Do you know what I would be
doing right now if Yulian had not existed?”

“Asking
me to tell you everything I’ve observed about the interior of the Palace?”

Vlad
gave a bark of laughter.  “Precisely.”

“So
I can only conclude that before his death Yulian had already provided the Volya
with the layout of the building.”

“The
parts that matter.  Like the theater.”

“Exactly
what were you planning to do on the night of the Tchaikovsky ball?”

Vlad
took an inelegant slurp of his vodka, his thin lip resting on the chipped part
of the rim.  “What does it matter?  Yulian is gone and with him, our chances.” 

“And
yet you asked me if I was going to be in the theater that night.”

Vlad
looked at him sharply, his pale eyes cutting from a distant gaze to Davy’s face
with such speed that Davy jumped.  “You flatter yourself, comrade.  We would
not take you on so fast, not even on the recommendation of Professor Cooper. 
You think it is this simple?  You are introduced and within days become the
inside man with all our plans?”

“That
isn’t what I thought at all,” Davy said with complete honestly.  Even in his
most anxious moments, he had never entertained the thought of what he’d say if
the Volya tried to recruit him.  “I assumed that you were warning me away from
the theater as a friend.”

Vlad
shrugged with a suspiciously high level of nonchalance, and put down his
glass.  “There is nothing to warn you away from.  Just another night of
champagne and waltzing and jewels and idiocy.  The incessant feeding of the
imperial family and their friends upon the very flesh of Mother Russia.  You do
well to shun such a place.  Absence from their corruption will save your soul,
if not your flesh.”

Davy
sensed that this was far from the total truth, but he was not sure what to do
about it.  Vlad now he looked at his pocketwatch and winced.  Time for the
meeting of the Volya, evidently.  A meeting to which Davy was not invited and
there was no telling when the two of them would meet again.

But
the Russians liked toasts, didn’t they?  They always seemed to be toasting
someone or something.  There was but a swallow of vodka left in his glass. 
Davy raised it.  “Peace to your country.”

Vlad
left his own glass on the table.  “You insult me, my friend,” he said.  “True Russians
do not want peace.  We want justice.”

Chapter
Seventeen

The Winter Palace –
The Grand Ballroom

June 22, 1889

4:50 PM

They
had been dancing for nearly an hour when Konstantin took a break.  There was a
carafe of water on a tray atop the piano and he led her to it, poured a careful
glass for her and then himself.   Emma took it with pleasure.  She had been
thirsty for some time, but the fact that he was as well was a type of
confirmation that her dancing indeed was getting better.  They had spent the
last fifty minutes working hard, covering larger sections of the floor.  It was
the first time a pianist had joined them in their lessons and practicing with
music had inspired her.  Her small solo within the long and complex imperial
waltz lasted no more than twenty seconds, but they had gone over the steps
numerous times and there was a faint sheen of perspiration on Konstantin’s
broad brow.  It showed her what she suspected that he would never say – that
they were truly dancing now.

“You
are not married?” he asked.

The
question surprised her.  They had never spoken of anything remotely personal.  
She shook her head and took another sip of water.

“So
the man you were with when you opened the door…he was…”  He paused, glanced at
the pianist.  “Who was the man you were with that day?”

She
supposed it was natural that he would want to know.

“Thomas
Bainbridge,” she said. “The Queen’s physician.”

“And
he is your lover?”

“Good
heavens,” she said.  “Certainly not.”

He
sipped his water too, regarding her flustered response with confusion.  “If
there is no husband and no lover,” he said, “then who protects you?”

Trevor
protects me, she thought automatically and the speed with which the name came
to her was surprising.   Not that she could tell Konstantin this, of course. 

“I
protect myself,” she said.  “I live on my salary as Alix’s governess and being
in service to the royal family puts a very adequate roof of my head, as I’m
sure you can well imagine.”  His surprise irritated her, although she couldn’t
have said why.  The majority of Englishmen undoubtedly felt the same way, that
it was impossible for a woman to function without male protection.  “I am what
we call a modern woman,” she added, and for some reason felt ridiculous almost
the minute the words were out of her mouth.

“A
modern woman,” he said slowly and thoughtfully, rolling the syllables around on
his tongue like a pit from a cherry.  It seemed as if the combination of the
two words confused him, as if they had stretched his knowledge of English – or
even his knowledge of women, which she knew to be far greater – to its breaking
point.   But she could think of no way to explain to him why Geraldine and her
friends were marching for the vote -  not here and now, to this man, who lived
in a country where even men did not vote.  Besides, even if she could have made
him understand, that was far from the whole of it.  Suffrage was a very small
part of what Emma Kelly expected out of life.

“Modern
women,” she said tentatively, “or perhaps, now that I think of it, modern men
as well, do not look to a church or a government or even their ancestral family
to assign them their position in life or instruct them on their fate.  They
expect to be self-sufficient and have the chance to determine their own
destiny.”

He
looked at her utterly without comprehension.  She tried again.

“To
be modern is to look at things objectively,” she said, “thus trying to see them
as they really are.  Modern women value science more than faith.  They value the
future more than the past and friendship more than romance.”

“Oh
no,” he said, with mock seriousness.  He thrust his hand to his chest and
pretended to stagger about.  “But this is terrible.  Does it hurt much, to be
this modern woman?”

“Sometimes,”
she admitted.

“That
is because in the heart all woman expect to be a princess,” he said, in a tone
that implied the subject was closed.  “They want the man to come and rescue
them from the lives they have as children.  Like in the folk stories of the
ballet, where the duck becomes the swan.  This is what we dance, you know.  We
dance the dreams of little girls.”

A
few months earlier, Emma might privately have agreed with him, at least with
the part about all women wanting to be a princess.  But now that she had met
Ella and Alix, she wasn’t so sure.  She thought of Alix, so weighted down in
her borrowed silver dress that she could hardly lift her fork, and Ella, far
from home and married to a man who ignored her.  Their royal births did not
seem to have guaranteed them any particular happiness.  In fact, you could
argue that in many ways these real-life princesses enjoyed fewer freedoms and
pleasures than Emma herself. 

Konstantin
put down his water glass and held out his arm.  Practice was evidently resuming
and as they walked back to the center of the dance floor it suddenly occurred
to Emma why he had really asked if she and Tom were lovers. 

“You
needn’t worry about what Tom and I saw,” she said quietly.  The pianist did not
appear to be interested in their conversation, but one could never tell.  “He
may not have a mistress himself but I assure you he will keep your secret.  I
have never met anyone who cares so little for conventional morality.”

“So
he is this modern man.”

“I
suppose he is,” she said.  “I suppose they all are.”  She realized she had
almost slipped with the word “all,” so she hastily continued.  “Those of us who
travel with the Queen, that is.  Her bodyguards and messengers and private
physicians.”

He
took a moment to absorb this information, but did not ask why the famously
traditional Queen Victoria might have chosen to surround herself with such a
pack of godless wolves.  “And it makes you happy, to depend on no one or
nothing and to always think for yourselves?”

“Trevor
and I are the ones who suffer the most with it,” Emma said.  “We want the whole
world to change, or at least we say we do, but I suspect there will always be
something in us that will mourn the death of the old order.” 

Talking
with Konstantin always seemed to have this effect on her.  She found herself
blurting out things she had never consciously thought about, but the minute the
words left her mouth she knew that they were true. Tom rushed toward the novel,
embracing scientific advancement with every fiber of his being, and in his own
way Davy displayed equal aplomb, playing the cards he’d been dealt with the
posture of a man who knows he has little to lose.  Rayley of course had his characteristic
reserve, his constant sense of standing back from a situation and watching it
unfold as if all were a play staged for his benefit.  This detachment, Emma
knew, was the sort of mental state that true modernity required.  She and
Trevor were the ones in trouble.  They could not help reacting to the people
and events around them.  As many times as they declared themselves to be
creatures of logic, they probably fooled no one.  In the heat of the moment,
they made their decisions based on impulse and emotion.

“If
the two of you suffer the same,” Konstantin said, holding out his arms, “then
this Trevor must be a great friend.”

“He
is.”

“So
he is the one who is your lover.”

“He
most certainly is not,” she said impatiently, moving into his frame.  “I have
no lover.  Trevor and I are friends, and that is all.”

“Good,”
he said.  He was moving slowly in the shape of a box, as if this were their
first lesson.  “For people who are similar in character should not be lovers. 
Your lover should be someone who stands across from you, who sees the world
from a different place.” 

She
wondered if he were speaking of his own affair with Tatiana.  “We have a phrase
for that in English,” she said.  “We say that opposites attract.”

“Opposites
attract,” he repeated, expanding the scope of their waltz very slightly,
beginning only the gentlest of a turn.  “As in science, you mean?  The, how do
you say this, magnum?”

“We
say ‘magnet,’” she said.  “And yes, that is the basic idea.  But I have always
wondered.  Opposites attract…and then what?  Does the attraction remain or,
after a while, do these dissimilar lovers fall apart?”

He
did not answer, at least not with words.  He turned his face from hers,
stretched his frame and began to dance with more energy, pushing off from
flexed knees, covering a greater distance across the floor with each stride,
carrying her along like a sail carries a mast.  Or perhaps she was the sail and
he was the mast – it was hard to say, really.  She closed her eyes, more out of
habit than anything else, and let herself relax into the repetitive motions of
the dance.

At
moments like this, when her guard was dropped and her mind was free to wander,
Emma would sometimes drift back in time and speculate about how her life might
have been different.  If her mother had not nursed the town during the cholera
epidemic…if her parents had not sickened and died and her brother Adam not gone
to America and if she and Mary had never been cast into the dark streets of
London…if none of that had ever happened, then who might she be?  She probably
would have stayed forever in the town of her birth.  Been the schoolmaster’s
daughter who married the cobbler’s son.  Most likely would have had children of
her own by now, as would Mary and Adam.  She never would have met Gerry, then
Tom, and then all the others.  Never would have traveled great distances,
baited the Ripper, swam the Seine, waltzed with a Siberian.  She would most
certainly not have been a modern woman, but would she have been happier?  More
at peace?  For seeing the world in all its cruel glory was changing her, each
day after the next, and there were times when she was no longer sure of
anything. 

“You
can do the waltz correctly now,” Konstantin said.  “And this is good.  Soon you
will do it big.”

She
opened her eyes and looked at him questioningly. 

“You
have learned fast,” he said.  “Faster than any.  Five lessons and you do not
make any mistakes.  Very good.  But there is more to dance than not making a
mistake.”

Her
mouth curved up.  “Are you suggesting that I have learned faster than any
student you’ve ever taught?”

“You
are the intelligent one, Emma Kelly.”

He
said her name strangely, all the emphasis on the last syllables of the word. 
Em-mah Kel-lee.  He had already told her how to make the dance bigger, at one
of the previous lessons.  Apparently this was the only part of the affair that
was her decision.  In the first motion of the waltz, when the woman steps back
on her right foot, that simple gesture tells the man how big the dance will
be.  Her backward step creates the empty space he will step into and he cannot
go farther than she allows.  The man determines the steps, the rotation, the direction,
the timing, the couple’s position on the floor.  But the woman alone decides
how big their dance will be. 

He
had shown her how to do this.  How to bend the knee of her standing leg and
push the other one back with confidence, stretching her legs apart like a
hurdler, creating a world for him to move into, giving him a large canvas upon
which to paint the colors of the waltz.  She understood it all intellectually
and had even been getting used to the required movements, although it was not
an easy thing to step backwards with confidence, to commit so absolutely to a
future one could not see.   Something was keeping her small and tight, and she
knew this, but she could not name this particular fear. 

“You
have wondered if Tom will keep quiet about the day we found you and Tatiana,”
she said, a bit breathlessly, for they were moving with more energy now, the
pianist having switched from Beethoven to Strauss.  “But you have never
wondered about me.”

“I
know you will keep my secret,” he said.  “You are my friend.”

The
word “friend” stunned her.  It was true, of course, that in their short time
together they had formed a type of bond, that she indeed trusted him in any
number of strange, wordless ways that she had never shared with anyone else. 
But it was still the last word she ever expected him to use.  They slowed to a
stop as the song ended and she glanced at the pianist.  He was ruffling through
sheets of music, preparing to begin again, and without thinking Emma stretched
on tiptoe.  Came as close as she could to the elegant length of Konstantin’s
neck, the shine of his hair, the curve of his ear. 

“You
must leave the palace,” she whispered.  “The tsar’s private guard believes you
are a killer.”

The
Winter Palace – The Guest Quarters

5:28
PM

The
Queen not only received daily updates from London via telegram but also
received British newspapers.  Granted, the issues were generally three or four
days out of date by the time they arrived in St Petersburg by train, but Trevor
still enjoyed flipping through them as he took his tea.  He was a bit homesick,
a condition that was soothed by the familiar pages of the London Star.  Even
the advertisements for soap and tea and digestive tonics suddenly held a
certain charm.