City of Silence (City of Mystery) (31 page)

Chapter
Twenty

The
Streets of St. Petersburg

1:50
PM

It
was bad luck to question good luck.  He knew this and yet he could not help but
wonder why she had agreed to meet him here, in the center of town, far beyond
the palace gates.  St. Petersburg was a large city, as he had reminded her many
times before, and size afforded anonymity.  The chances they would be observed
strolling the parks or drinking wine in some café were slim, and in fact one
could quite reasonably argue that it was safer to tryst in the crowded streets
than within the walls of the palace.  And yet she had always hesitated, as if
the very act of seeing him in the full light of day would force her to
recognize that their affair was real.

But
this morning a note had come.  A suggestion they should take luncheon together,
in a most public place, Senate Square.  And she had further surprised him by
announcing – announcing it abruptly, before the menus had even been brought to
their table – that she was prepared to leave Filip and run away with him to
Paris.  He must go at once, she said.  In fact, he must leave this very day.  He
could get a job in a French dancing school and she would follow in a few
months, after enough time had passed that no one would draw any correlation
between his absence and her own.  Money was no longer the problem they had
always assumed it to be, nor were the tickets, or travel papers or even the letters
of introduction.  The Grand Duchess Ella Feodorovna had seen to all that.

His
initial reaction was disbelief.  He had been dancing with Ella for some time
and had never noticed her heart to be within the clutches of any particular
altruistic impulse.  He knew that he and Tatiana had been far from discreet,
but the last person he would have worried might guess their secret was the notoriously
self-obsessed Grand Duchess, who was so disinterested in the stories of others
that she had never inquired about the village of his birth, the source of his
training, or whether his parents still lived. 

She
certainly had never asked if he would like to go to Paris.

Tatiana
slid a piece of paper across the table.  A brief glance revealed it to be a
train ticket.  He placed his wine glass over it, so that the paper - so that
his very freedom – would not blow away in a passing gust of wind.  Of course
Ella had chosen Tatiana for her court.  Tatiana’s beauty made her a jewel and
the Romanovs, even those who had entered the family by marriage, collected
jewels compulsively, amassing too many to count.  But it was certainly strange
that the Grand Duchess would be willing to forfeit both her dance master and
her lady in waiting in one swoop, even if she knew the depth of their shared
desperation. 

“Why
would she help us?” he asked, not noticing that the base of his wine glass had leaked
a perfectly-formed red circle onto the railway ticket.

She
is willing to help because we have, quite by accident, created something she is
unable to create for herself, Tatiana thought.  She is helping us because I am
giving her the most precious thing I have in exchange for your safely.  Because
I am willing to trade my child for this ticket you treat so carelessly, this
piece of paper you slosh wine upon, as if it were a rag.  But Tatiana
understood that Konstantin’s pride, as vast and cold as Siberia itself, was
forcing him to feign this nonchalance and she bit the words back.  Instead she merely
said, “The Grand Duchess can be very kind when she chooses…and is this not the
most glorious day that has ever existed?”

“The
most glorious,” he agreed, looking around them.  The café where they sat was
small, but prettily situated.  There was a flower market across from it, and
petals wafted through the air.  A cat, too sleek to be a stray and evidently
the pet of the owner, had insinuated his way around their legs as they sipped
their wine.  Tatiana had been the one to choose the bottle.  It was French, and
undoubtedly more expensive than any he had ever tasted.  It was velvet to the
tongue, just as everything Tatiana was saying was velvet to his mind.

“I
will go in two days,” he said.  “After the ball.”

She
shook her head.  Her hair was not pinned up as it usually was, but rather
pulled to one side in a fat loose braid, a style very different from what the
ladies wore in the palace.  It made her look younger, almost like a school
girl, and he supposed it was evidence that no one knew she had slipped from the
palace to meet him here, that she had dared not ring for the services of her
maid.

“You
must go now,” she said, “when no one expects it. Their attention is diverted to
the ball.”

“I
am expected to dance.  My ladies -”

“There
are other dance masters who can lead them in their waltz.  I must insist.  My
husband –“

“Do
not call him that.”

“All
right then.  Let us be in agreement.  I will not speak of my husband if you do
not speak of your ladies.”

He
smiled and sipped his wine.  She did not smile and did not sip hers.

“The
imperial guard believes you are connected to the murders in the ballroom.”

“So
I understand.  But who told you this?  The Grand Duchess?”  When she did not
answer, he pulled in another great gulp of wine and stared into the distance. 
“Of course it was the Grand Duchess.  But I am not connected in the least to
any of these crimes.  You believe this, do you not?”

“I
would hardly go to Paris with a murderer, would I?  Of course I know you are
innocent, and so does Ella.  But if my husband –“

“Do
not –“

She
looked at him sharply, raising a glove to shade her eyes as he did so.  “Listen
to me, Konstantin.  If the imperial guard intends to arrest you, they will wait
until the ball is over and the tsar’s entourage has moved to the coast for the
summer.  And who shall come to your defense then?  What friends shall you find
in an empty palace?  No, of course you must go today.  The ticket is already
dated and stamped.”  And when he still hesitated, she added, “Besides, you know
the temperament of the Grand Duchess as well as I do.  She cares for us now. 
We are her distraction of the hour.  But who knows how long her interest will
remain fixated on our troubles?”

The
fullness of the situation struck him at last.  “You have brought me here to say
goodbye.”

“Only
for a while.  I shall be in Paris by the time the first leaves fall, I promise
it.”

He
sat in silence for a moment, absorbing this extraordinary rash of news.  She
had finally agreed to leave her husband, to come with him to France. 
Apparently half the palace knew him to be a murder suspect.  Time was of such
essence that he must leave at once, so he had unknowingly slept his last night
in his bed, eaten his last meal in the palace, taken his last steps within the
ballroom.  There would be no chance to say goodbye to all his ladies – those he
liked, those he did not.  His parents, for they indeed did still live, would
never see him again.  Tomorrow he would awaken in a new land.

But
the most extraordinary fact was that his patroness in this complete reinvention
of his life was the Grand Duchess Ella Feodorovna. 

“All
will be fine,” Tatiana said, now more calmly.  “Ella assures me that if she introduces
you to the owner of the Ballet Clausse he will take you on immediately and help
you find a place to stay.  I take it they are some measure of old friends.  So
I will know, you see, precisely where to find you in October.”

“It
seems I have no choice.”

“True. 
At least not in the timing.  But this is our chance to begin again.  And very
few people are given such a chance.”

“We
must have a picture,” he said, abruptly pushing his chair back from the table. 
“A picture to commemorate this most extraordinary day.”

She
followed his gaze to the sight of a street artist in the corner of the square,
a man painting a patch of daisies.  Konstantin waved him over and he moved
toward them at once, dragging his easel and palate of paints.  “For a year,”
Konstantin said, “we have taken such pains to leave no evidence of our love. 
But today there is no need to be careful.  Today we must have a memento.”

She
nodded.  The waiter had brought their food and they ate as the man painted
them.  And at some point, without comment, Konstantin picked up the train
ticket and put it into his pocket.  When the clock in the square struck three,
he waited for her to react.  She was always extraordinarily aware of the hour
and he had thought on many occasions that this was what having a love affair
meant.  For if a woman possessed of both a husband and a lover knows anything,
she knows what time it is.  But she said nothing and he found this so uncharacteristic
that he had to ask.

“When
must you return to the palace?”

“There
is no need to rush,” she said.  “The Grand Duchess wishes to speak to you one
last time before you depart and after that we have the whole afternoon.  At
least until it is time for you to catch the launch to the train station.”  She
looked up at the sky, which had shifted during their luncheon from dark blue to
light, as a low flat cover of clouds had moved in.  “The day is changing,” she
said.

“Everything
is.”

The
drawing which the street artist presented to them was not bad.  Tatiana’s bright
rose colored dress shouted its presence from the center and, beneath the café
table, the man had taken note that their knees were touching.  Their feet were
perhaps touching as well, but given the central location of the cat this was
impossible to verify.  Their faces were turned away from him, as if both of
them were looking at something in the far distance.  Konstantin was charmed by
the conceit, which showed the yellow braid of Tatiana and his own darker hair,
similarly curved, stretching across their shoulders in the manner of two
question marks.  He believed their facelessness cast them into as archetypal
every couple, two lovers determined to squeeze a lifetime into a single
afternoon.  Tatiana, when she beheld the drawing, suspected that the artist
turned them away because he was not skilled at drawing faces, but she only
nodded and smiled.

Pleased
with her tacit approval, Konstantin poured the last dregs of the wine into his
glass and handed it to the artist, who bowed with great solemnity before
drinking.  Their last bits of chicken and potato were tossed to the cat.  And
then they watched as the street artist wrapped brown paper around the drawing,
crisscrossing the bundle with twine.  Layer after layer, making a loop large
enough to serve as a rough handle.  Konstantin paid him, and Tatiana paid the
café bill, and then he stood and held out his hand to her.  After a moment of
hesitation. Tatiana took it.  He slipped his other hand through the loop of
string and they left the café, the carefully wrapped painting brushing against
Konstantin’s leg with every step he took.

They
have done everything a man and woman can do to one another.  They have done
things that Tatiana previously had not known were possible, things she believed
might stop her heart and rip her soul from her body.  They have broken every
law of god and man and likely ruined each other in the process, but the one
thing they have never done together is walk a city street hand in hand. 

The
Café of the Revolutionaries

3:30
PM

Among
the thousands of people taking no note of Konstantin Antonovich and Tatiana
Orlov walking through the streets of St. Petersburg were three men who also happened
to be sitting at a café table.  It was a far humbler place, lacking artists and
flowers and even the rustic charm of a napping cat, and beer rather than
champagne was the order of the day.  They had sat there for hours, so many that
the serving girl had long despaired that they would ever vacate the table for
the use of more prompt and generous patrons.  But at least the length of their
meeting had given enough time for the discord between them to settle and for
Vlad to regain his confidence in the face of the more experienced men.

 “The
place where we hold her must not be too comfortable,” Vlad was saying.  “It
must be a common room with common food and with no particular accommodation
against the heat or the stink of the docks.  That way when she is returned to
her fond papa she can report to him the conditions in which his people live. 
Give her a pallet and a tin cup of water and let us see what the tsar’s
daughter makes of that.”

This
speech both amused and annoyed Filip, but he took care to make sure his expression
revealed neither emotion.  The younger men in the Volya often argued for
extreme measures in dealing with the aristocracy, declaring that they must be
forced into the lowest of conditions in order to understand the need for
reform.   Conditions that most of them had never experienced themselves, mind
you, and certainly not Vlad or Gregor, who had enjoyed the comforts of a middle
class boyhood and university education, furnished courtesy of their own fond
papas. 

“But
we must be practical,” Filip said calmly. “It may take some time before the
tsar enacts the reforms we will request and thus our hostage can be released. 
We can scarcely toss the child into a warehouse like a sack of potatoes and
lock the door. “