The Ice King (8 page)

Tanya realised whom he was at once, although he looked older than the engravings she had seen of him, and stouter; his hair was receding, and he looked rather tired, but he was undoubtedly Alexander the Blessed, and she could not help gazing at him as if he were the most wonderful and precious of all the treasures in the Palace. She quite failed to notice Boris and Prince Nikolai among the gentlemen in attendance on the Emperor, and passed on into the next gallery in something of a daze at having actually seen him so close that she might almost have touched him.

Presently they came upon Vladimir Karachev, very smart in his full-dress uniform, and he led them aside from the main stream to a long side gallery in the Little Hermitage which was reserved for friends of the Emperor's attendants, where Prince Nikolai had bespoken a table for them where they could sit down and be served with glasses of tea and little cakes. Irina, who was very tired by now, fell asleep, but the others were glad to rest and look about them in the comparative quiet, for there were only about a hundred people in the gallery.

It was a very long, narrow room, more like a wide corridor, and the windows along one wall looked into a garden. It surprised Tanya, for it was on a level with them, but she knew they were on the first floor. Before she could resolve the puzzle, Count Alexei asked her if she would like to stay for the dancing, which would start in the evening. She would have liked to say "Yes," but her feet felt as if they had been pounded with wooden mallets, and a glance at the others showed her some faint signs of apprehension amid the weariness in their faces, so she replied that she really felt too tired, unless anyone else wished to stay. But, as she expected, they all said thankfully that they would prefer to go home.

Tanya looked idly at the pictures on the walls and the fine carved and gilded capitals at the tops of the pilasters, really too surfeited with beautiful and curious sights to take in any more, and then she caught sight of Prince Nikolai standing by the door, looking about him, using the advantage of his height to survey the room in search of someone. Without thinking, she raised her hand and then lowered it again, and felt herself colour at her presumption in thinking that he might be looking for . . . for the Kirovs.

She was right, however, and he came along the gallery to them, accompanied by another man, a stranger, who somehow looked a little familiar. He was much shorter than the Prince and had a distinctly snub nose, protruding underlip and a permanent expression of mild surprise. When Prince Nikolai had greeted them all, he said to Tanya, "May I present M. Karl Ivanovich Rossi? I'm sure you'll be interested to meet him."

“The architect?" Tanya exclaimed, her face lighting up with delight. "Oh, how kind of you to think of it!" and as she gave her hand to M. Rossi, she distinctly heard Prince Nikolai murmur "Sevastopol!”

M. Rossi drew up a chair beside Tanya and said in a pleasant, friendly manner, "Prince Volkhov tells me that you have a great interest in architecture." He spoke French with a slightly Italianate accent.

“Yes, I have indeed, but almost entirely from books," Tanya replied, her enthusiasm overcoming her shyness. "This is the first chance I have had to visit a great city and see the buildings in the flesh, so to speak. I particularly admire Neo-Classical architecture.”

Rossi smiled, for this was his own preference, and he began to talk about his ideas for improving the layout of the city, becoming more at ease and forthcoming as he went on in response to Tanya's obviously eager interest.

“It's all so piecemeal, you see," he said. "The Emperor Peter laid down a good basic plan, but the actual buildings are unconnected. A little here, something else there, and we have somehow to introduce more cohesion. We've made a beginning, and you will see it here, in the Palace area. Now, we have here a great open space— the Palace Square— so." He produced a pencil and a notebook from his pocket and began to sketch rapidly. "Now, to the west, this continues into Admiralty Square. On the north side, we have the big range of this, the Winter Palace and the Hermitages, Rastrelli's fine exuberant Baroque, full of ornament and restless movement, and, because it is the Palace, it must be the most important building in the area. Further along here, we have the huge solid masses, the plain Doric of Zakharov's new Admiralty. To the east and south-east — confusion — bits and pieces. So. We have cleared them away, and now my Mikhailovsky Palace is beginning to rise here, to the east." His pencil flew over the paper as he talked, conjuring up his vision so that Tanya could readily imagine how it would look.

“It will be quite magnificent!" she said. "What will you put here, at the far end of Admiralty Square?”

Rossi turned to a fresh page and began to sketch again, showing her how he intended to set there a pair of buildings for the Senate and the Holy Synod, to form a comprehensive whole with St. Isaac's Cathedral, now in the process of being rebuilt to Montferrand's design. "One day," he said, smiling happily at Tanya's enthusiastic response, "all in time. I'm still young enough to hope to see it all come about.”

TANYA and M. Rossi were engrossed in their conversation for nearly an hour, and only stopped talking when a footman came to summon the architect to the Imperial Presence. Tanya bade him farewell with regret, but turned to the others with a happy smile curving her unfashionably wide mouth.

“Oh, I
did
enjoy that!" she exclaimed. "Only fancy! Sitting in the Winter Palace, talking to a real architect!"

“Only you're in the Hermitage, not the Winter Palace," Fedor pointed out.

“You can hardly expect her to realise that," Prince Nikolai said rather sharply. "I've no doubt she doesn't know where she is at the moment, for most people require a map to find their way about for the first few years they spend here, at least. I suggest that you guide us back to the Palace Square entrance, Fedor, as you know your way about so well!”

The slight asperity in his tone at the beginning of this speech had softened by the end of it and the last part was almost jocular. Fedor admitted that he knew only roughly where he was, by the garden outside the windows, and had not the faintest idea which way to turn to reach Palace Square, so Prince Nikolai said that he would endeavour to show them the right route.

As they walked through the still-crowded Palace, Tanya thanked Prince Nikolai for allowing her the opportunity to meet Karl Rossi. "It was most thoughtful of you, and k . . . and, and, er . . . thoughtful . . ." She made a helpless little gesture with her hands, and caught that faint gleam of amusement again in Prince Nikolai's eyes as he offered, "Considerate?"

“Thank you. Considerate."

“I had a momentary doubt that you might reply 'Who?' when I presented him, followed by 'I've never heard of him!' but my faith in your well-informed memory was not betrayed," Prince Nikolai observed. "You must come here again, when the place is less crowded, and see how his 1812 Gallery is coming along."

“Is that where all the portraits are to be hung?" Tanya asked, summoning up a faint memory of something she had read.

“Yes. All the Generals who commanded against Bonaparte in 1812. More than three hundred portraits. An Englishman called Dawes is painting most of them, and very good they are too."

“I should like very much to see them, as well as the Gallery," Tanya said. "My Great-Uncle knew many of them, and often talked of them. It would be interesting to see what they looked like."

“There's one now," Prince Nikolai nodded towards a tall, dark-haired man with a large beaky nose and a healthy, ruddy complexion, dressed in military uniform. "General Miloradovich. He's a friend of Vladimir Sergeivich, for Vladimir won his St. George saving the General's life."

“Oh? Do tell — what happened?”

Prince Nikolai gave her a sombre look and replied, "You must ask Vladimir to tell you himself. He might do so, if he thought you really wished to know."

“I doubt it," Tanya replied. "The dear man is much too shy!" She turned her head to look at a particularly beautiful picture they were passing, and failed to see a rather odd expression of something like bewilderment which crossed Prince Nikolai's face, as if he had received an unexpected jab.

“M. Rossi reminded me of someone," Tanya remarked thoughtfully, "But I can't think who it was. I have a vague impression of an engraving of a portrait, rather than someone I've actually seen . . ."

“Paul the First," Prince Nikolai said drily.

“Why, yes! How did you guess?"

“There's quite a strong resemblance, whereas Alexander Pavlovich resembles his mother, fortunately. Paul Petrovich was not exactly handsome. Rossi's mother was an Italian dancer.”

Tanya digested these rather cryptic remarks in silence, and had little difficulty in working out the implications, as she was by no means stupid or ignorant.

As they waited in the vestibule while a footman went to find the Kirovs' carriage, Tanya peered out across the snow covered expanse of Palace Square to where the shapeless stubs of the new building were just visible in the light of the street-lamps, and said, "You can see what M. Rossi meant. It will be much improved when his plans are carried out."

“It'll take some time," Prince Nikolai replied, "for the scale is immense. I expect he'll build the Senate and Synod louses too – he's a determined fellow, and the Romanovs are great builders.”

The carriage arrived at that moment, and Tanya gave the Prince her hand in farewell, smiling up at him, her eyes shining with delight at all she had seen and heard in the Palace as she thanked him again, and for a moment the melancholy look on his face softened in response.

“However many people were there?" Tanya enquired on :he way home, thinking of the great crowds in the Palace. "They issue thirty thousand tickets each year," Countess Maria informed her, "and I'm sure they're all taken up!" Irina was carried straight off to bed when they reached home, and the others dined and then sat cosily in Countess Maria's little sitting-room. They were all very tired, having been to midnight service in the Kazan Cathedral the previous light, and, as Count Alexei remarked, there are few things more tiring than walking about on marble floors, looking at other people's fine things, so they were content to rest and read, or sew, or, in Tanya's case, just think about all the Beautiful and curious things they had seen.

“How very kind of Prince Nikolai to think of it, and to let me meet M. Rossi," she thought. "Well, I suppose he always sets tickets for the family, as Maria says he thinks of them as his own, but I'm not – I'm just a stranger who will only be here for a few weeks, so that was sheer kindness," and she also thought she should search the dictionary for a few synonyms for "kind", for fear that Prince Nikolai might carry out his threat! The time seemed to be passing all too quickly for Tanya, but she made the most of every moment of it, spending much of the day going about the city, whenever the carriage could be spared, either with Fedor or Count Alexei, seeing as many buildings as she could, if only from the outside. Every evening and most afternoons were occupied in visiting or receiving visitors, and she attended as many as four balls in one week. Prince Nikolai appeared at many of the receptions and all the balls, and seemed to make a point of spending some time with her, particularly asking her to dance four times at each ball, as he had said he intended to do.

Of course, this caused a good deal of whispering and many raised eyebrows, and on one occasion Prince Nikolai enquired, "Does the talk worry you at all?"

“Not really," Tanya replied. "I shall be here for such a short time that it can do me no harm, and I'll soon be forgotten when I'm gone.”

She was not aware of the note of regret and wistfulness in her voice, but the Prince noticed it. "Must you go?" he asked.

“I have no choice. I've been offered a home, and I'm grateful for it. Maria Nikolaevna and Alexei Fedorovich have been more than generous – far more so than they can afford, I fear – and I shall never forget all they're doing for me, giving me this wonderful time here. I shall think back on this in years to come and be very grateful to them, and to you, and to all the others who've made me welcome and helped me to enjoy my stay."

“At least you'll have something pleasant to look back on, even if there's not very much ahead," Prince Nikolai remarked. His voice was tinged with bitterness, and that cold, remote look fell like a shadow across his face. They finished the dance in silence.

Colonel Karachev, who was more perceptive than most people realised, was made a little uneasy by some of the comments he overheard on the Prince's attentions to Tanya, and at that particular ball he took an opportunity to draw Boris aside and have a quiet word with him on the subject, with the result that both those gentlemen began to ask Tanya o dance four times in an evening, and some of the Colonel's young officers claimed her more than once as well. She realised what they were up to and was amused by it, but Prince Nikolai, although he said nothing, noted their activities and let a faint flicker of annoyance cross his face. When he asked Tanya if she would care to attend the Epiphany ceremony on Palace Quay and she told him that Boris had already invited all the Kirovs, he said with some asperity, "There was no need for him to put himself about," and sounded rather more as if he meant "poke his nose in!"