To Kill a Tsar

by Andrew Williams

  ‘You’re coming with me,’ Constable Rostislov said, lifting his uniform coat from a peg.

  ‘But I have to be back. They’ll miss me.’

  The policeman laughed. He was clearly in great good humour.

  ‘Too bad. We’re going to Fontanka 16.’

  5

  The earnest faces and desperate talk left a dull grey impression on Frederick Hadfield’s mind for days and he resolved to be busy if another invitation was delivered to his door. He thought of Lydia Figner often and found himself consumed by feelings of guilt about the careless way he had ended their affair. As the days passed and he heard nothing more from her sisters, he began to wonder if they had just dismissed him as a hopeless case, beyond redemption, another fuzzy liberal without the vision or courage necessary for their great socialist project. For the most part, he was happy to be considered so, even if it was impossible to entirely ignore the truth of Vera’s parting shot: there is no freedom in Russia. With a stroke of his pen the tsar had made the army master of life and liberty in his empire. Men and women suspected of ‘subversive tendencies’ could be brought before a court martial and either imprisoned or banished without any recourse to an appeal.

  From time to time he would cross the Neva by the pontoon bridge at the eastern tip of Vasilievsky and stare across the water at the grim stone face of the St Peter and St Paul Fortress. The enemies the state simply wished to forget were held in the cellars of the Alexeevsky Ravelin until cold and hunger carried them away. Would the Figners die in this Russian Bastille? And he would imagine Vera shivering in the darkness, her white face still defiant, an unspoken ‘Didn’t I say so’ in the damp air between them.

  But Hadfield was too busy on the wards of the Nikolaevsky and with a growing list of private patients to brood for long on the fate of the Figners or the country’s future. With the help of his aunt, he began to establish his reputation as a physician in embankment society, in particular with Anglo-Russian women of mature years, of whom there were a goodly number. So much nicer than those German doctors was the general view, and so well qualified. Some remembered his father with affection, and one old lady had ‘the honour’ to have been examined by his great-uncle, Sir James; ‘You are so like him, dear,’ she had said, with a tear of memory in her eye. And it had been suggested to him more than once that the emperor would one day favour the great-nephew of such a loyal servant of the House of Romanov with a royal appointment. Hadfield was grateful but a little embarrassed by the attention and looked forward to his afternoons at the Nikolaevsky with those who could not afford to pay for his services and would never dream of inviting him to dinner.

  On the last Sunday in April, the dvornik huffed and puffed up the stairs to his apartment with a note from the British embassy. It was from one of the consuls, an old friend of his father’s: the ambassador’s wife had taken to her bed with a fever and he would be grateful if Dr Hadfield could spare the time to attend upon her. A victoria was waiting at the door for an answer, the surly coachman tapping his whip impatiently against its iron frame.

  The embassy and its residence were at the seat of imperial power on the embankment before the Field of Mars where the emperor reviewed the royal regiments, within hailing distance of his palace. A fine eighteenth-century mansion, it had belonged to the first Alexander’s tutor and councillor, and the tsarconqueror had often danced in its famous White Ballroom. With less ceremony, Hadfield was shown up the bright marble staircase, through the embassy’s formal rooms and into the private quarters in the east wing.

  The Countess of Dufferin was suffering from no more than a severe head cold and an acute attack of anxiety. But Hadfield was charming and concerned and left her with just the sort of large brown bottle she was expecting and would have been disappointed not to receive. A generous dose of honey and lemon to be taken on a silver spoon. By the following day she was much improved and fulsome in her praise for ‘my doctor’ and his ‘miracle’ cure.

  Hadfield visited her twice more and, as her spirits improved, he found her to be engaging, with a keen interest in her new home. Lady Dufferin was not handsome: she had an angular face with a heavy brow, small dark eyes and loose curled hair, difficult to tame, judging by the number of pins and bands used to hold it in place. But the impression was of a lively woman with a wry, self-deprecating sense of humour. A little guarded – no doubt in keeping with her position – she had none of the aristocratic hauteur he had encountered in some of his patients in London. She questioned Hadfield closely about his work and expressed an interest in visiting the Nikolaevsky. The ambassador would accompany her, she said, the Earl of Dufferin wished to be familiar with all aspects of Russian life.

  ‘And your uncle, General Glen . . . Of course, he has made us very welcome, but I fear I may have offended him. I understand the general goes to church every day during Passion Week. Do you go to church that often, Doctor?’

  ‘Not as often as I should and not as often as my uncle would like,’ Hadfield said with a little shake of the head.

  He had grown a thick diplomatic skin – the loss of his father, the strange ‘Russian boy’ at an English boarding school, the studied patience of medical practice – these had shaped a personality naturally inclined to please, but had also taught him a comfortable degree of detachment. An admirer of Darwin and Huxley, he was an agnostic, a firm believer in natural selection and the descent of man, but he was careful not to express these views in what his mother liked to describe as ‘polite company’. For her sake he had accompanied the Glen family to the English church on Easter Sunday.

  ‘Your uncle is a man of forthright opinions. He was concerned that Dufferin and I had only been to the English church once at Easter.’

  Hadfield’s face must have betrayed the irritation he felt, for Lady Dufferin lifted her eyes to his and her patient smile became a conspiratorial one: ‘Well, the general recommended you. In practitioners, at least, his judgement is not to be faulted.’

  The following day the embassy coachman delivered a warm note from the ambassador requesting the pleasure of Dr Hadfield’s company at the opera.

  His father’s diamond studs, top hat, tails and black leather shoes from Jermyn Street – later he would smile at the rich irony of meeting her at the theatre in the company of a countess.

  The Dufferin party was seated in the grand tier to the right of the imperial suite in a box designated suitable for grand dukes and ambassadors. The Mikhailovsky was glittering silver in the brilliant light cast by the new electric sconces the management had installed at great expense.

  Her Ladyship had invited what she called a ‘select band of six’; Hadfield, the first and second secretaries at the embassy, and The Times’s man in St Petersburg, Mr George Dobson. It was a lively group, and the ambassador clearly believed he was among friends, presuming on a doctor’s discretion and the self-interest of a newspaper correspondent. He regaled them with a humorous anecdote told to him by the prime minister, Lord Beaconsfield, then there was talk of the war between Russia and Turkey and the seeds of discontent sown throughout the empire by the incompetent handling of the campaign.

  ‘Do you know, Doctor,’ said Lady Dufferin, turning to Hadfield, ‘a terrorist tried to kill the chief of the secret police—’

  ‘The Third Section—’ her husband corrected her from the seat beside her.

  ‘. . . just around the corner from our house? Two shots were fired into his carriage. They missed, but now they’re threatening to murder his daughter. And Mr Dobson says a girl walked into a party in Moscow last week and shot a man. That’s correct, isn’t it, Mr Dobson?’ Lady Dufferin leant back to catch the eye of the correspondent.

  ‘Yes, Your Ladyship. They say the victim was ordered to shoot the emperor but fled from Petersburg to avoid doing so and that the girl was sent to punish him.’

  ‘Well, what do you think of that?’ Lady Dufferin asked in a voice that left no doubt as to her own strong opinion on the matter.

  Hadfi
eld was relieved when the conversation turned to the ambassador’s first official visit to the Winter Palace. Leaning forward a little, he could see the only empty seats in the house were in the imperial suite. That Meyerbeer’s The Prophet was not to royal taste was hardly surprising, for it had been a great favourite in revolutionary circles in Switzerland where it was held to be a salutory tale of tyranny and religious hypocrisy.

  ‘. . . I don’t like it at all,’ said Lady Dufferin. ‘The electricity spoils the effect of the chandeliers. The balcony’s in darkness. And here,’ with a graceful flourish of her gloved hand she indicated the boxes on the opposite side of the grand tier, ‘the lamps are too bright. Look, the lights flicker and change colour. It just isn’t as gay as gas. But what an extraordinary modern age we live in.’

  Yes, yes, what a modern age. Hadfield nodded as if hanging on her every word, but his attention was fixed on the gloom near the back of the stalls. Later, he would wonder what had drawn him to her of the many hundreds seated below: Anna Kovalenko, his persecutor at the political salon, Anna with the strikingly beautiful blue eyes. Perhaps it was because even at such a distance he could sense she was restless and ill at ease. Evgenia Figner and Madame Volkonsky were sitting to her right; to her left, the vociferous and blood-thirsty Goldenberg. The imperial suite with its huge orange velvet and gold fringed drapes was almost directly above them. Fortunate then that the chairs inside it were empty, Hadfield thought with a wry smile, or the evening might have been spoilt.

  ‘Have you seen someone you know, Doctor?’ asked Lady Dufferin. ‘A patient?’

  ‘An acquaintance – a friend of my cousin’s,’ Hadfield replied, leaning back in his seat.

  The Anabaptists plotted and the wicked count carried off fair Bertha to his castle and for a while he was lost in the rhythm and grace of the music. But after a time, maddeningly, Hadfield’s gaze drifted from the stage to the orchestra pit and across the gentlemen in their tail coats and white ties, the ladies in taffeta and pearls, to the little band at the back of the stalls. What would they think of him if they knew he was in a tidy velvet box with a countess and the gentlemen of the British embassy? But did it matter what they thought? He had the troubling sense that his life was losing some of its shape. He had felt something of the same the week before, when he had rushed from a dirty crowded ward at the Nikolaevsky Hospital to a scented boudoir on the English Embankment to treat the wife of an iron master who was suffering from nothing more than a severe case of indigestion. From the grand tier he could imagine his shadow in the stalls below – the doctor who argued with passion for better public health, for a fairer distribution of wealth, the doctor who walked a humbler but principled path with comrades who thought the same.

  At the end of Act Two the mezzo soprano took her curtain call, the electric lights flickered and burst into life and the door of the box was opened by a waiter with a tray of tinkling glasses. Hadfield made his excuses: ‘So tiresome . . . friend of my cousin . . . really feel obliged . . .’ Lady Dufferin was all gracious understanding. From the stairs, he searched the shining pink faces in the foyer below but he could not see Evgenia Figner or her companions, and so with the single-minded purpose of a doctor summoned to a medical emergency, he began to shoulder his way through the scented press, deaf to the fluttering chorus of disapproval. Madame Volkonsky was the first to see him and she gave a little shake of her handkerchief in welcome: ‘Doctor.’

  The women had wandered to the front of the stalls and were standing at the rail beneath the proscenium arch, gazing into the orchestra pit. Goldenberg was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘How fortunate that we should find you here, Doctor.’ Madame Volkonsky offered him her hand and he held it for a moment, then, turning to the younger women, he gave a stiff little bow.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve been,’ Evgenia paused, ‘formally introduced.’ She placed provocative stress on the word ‘formally’. ‘Anna Kovalenko – Doctor Frederick Hadfield. Anna remembers you well, Doctor’ – this with a mischievous little smile.

  Anna had coloured a little, but her jaw was firmly set and there was an unmistakable look of defiance in her blue eyes. ‘Doctor.’ She was not wearing gloves and the hand she offered Hadfield was small and cold to the touch.

  ‘Are you enjoying the opera, Doctor?’ asked Madame Volkonsky. She did not wait for an answer: the mezzo soprano was quite wonderful, didn’t he agree, the handsome tenor singing the part of John of Leyden too. Wasn’t it an inspiring work – so many valuable lessons? On she twittered like a lark.

  ‘I know Vera will be sorry to have missed you,’ said Evgenia, cutting across her.

  ‘Vera was so fond of opera. Is she still in the city?’

  ‘She’s visiting our family in Kazan . . .’ Evgenia hesitated. ‘My mother . . .’ The uncomfortable frown hovering between her dark eyebrows suggested to Hadfield this was a half truth at best. Anna came to her rescue.

  ‘Which hospital do you work at?’ The question was fired with a peremptoriness that made him start.

  ‘The Nikolaevsky, Miss Kovalenko. And I have some patients of my own.’

  ‘Patients who can afford to pay.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, drawing the word out into a challenge. He was not going to be bullied into feeling guilty.

  ‘The Nikolaevsky is a military hospital, isn’t it?’ Again it sounded like a criticism.

  ‘But it doesn’t treat only soldiers.’

  ‘You said at Madame Volkonsky’s salon you believed in working among the people, winning their trust, and that you thought that was the only way to make them listen to us.’

  ‘I do believe that.’

  ‘There is a clinic for the poor not far from your hospital, in the Peski district. Evgenia and I do what we can there on Sundays. We need a doctor. Will you help us?’ She leant forward a little, her eyes shining with fervour. Hadfield could feel the colour rising in his face.

  ‘What a wonderful idea! Do say yes, Doctor,’ Madame Volkonsky gushed. ‘I am sure you’re right. If we help them, they will learn from us. That is the only way to bring about reform.’

  How foolishly sentimental Madame Volkonsky made his views sound, he thought, patronising too. Anna was still looking at him intently with those piercing blue eyes, and his heart beat a little faster.

  ‘Well, Doctor, will you help us?’

  ‘Of course, yes.’

  A small satisfied smile was playing on Anna’s lips and she looked away at last, the spell broken. The theatre bell began to ring for the third act, the musicians drifted back to their seats in the pit, the auditorium began to fill with the excited hum of anticipation.

  Sitting in the darkness behind Lady Dufferin, Hadfield wondered what on earth possessed him to agree. He was being drawn into association with people who – for all their philanthropy – believed killing and maiming could fashion a civilised society. Perhaps they were at the Mikhailovsky to plan just such an outrage, taking note of discreet corners beneath the imperial suite, while on the stage the basses thundered the unthinking dogmas of Meyerbeer’s Anabaptists. The light catching the pearls around the neck of the ambassador’s wife, the scent of pomade from the hair of her young gentlemen, crisp white cuffs and polished black shoes, and the thick orange velvet covering of the balcony rail; he took pleasure in these details like a scientist examining a slide beneath a microscope, for they were the comforts of the world in which he lived most of his life. But how much keener his appreciation if there was the risk of losing them – a small chance, granted – but enough to give life more edge. In Russia, guilt by association might secure even a well-connected doctor several years in a katorga in Siberia. Excitement, then, and no small satisfaction, in Sunday work the student doctor of his Zurich days would have respected.

  The stirring last chords, a polite second’s silence then a crescendo of applause as the heavy curtains swept back to reveal the first of the principals. With moist eyes, Lady Dufferin turned to her party then back to the stage, her
gloved hand gripping the edge of the balcony. Hadfield leant forward a little to peer over the countess’s, shoulder, and through the dark forest of hands he could see there were four empty seats. He felt a pang of disappointment: dowdy clothes, her neat little figure, her softly spoken accented Russian, her strange physicality, the frown that hovered between her dark brows – a little too closely set for classical beauty – her arrogant defiance and yet a certain reticence, and those searing blue eyes – those and more. He was intrigued and pleased, pleased he was now obliged to spend the following Sunday at Miss Kovalenko’s clinic.

  6

  28 MAY 1879

  Major Vladimir Barclay did not see the executioner kick the steps away but he heard the gasp of thousands like the sighing wind on the winter steppe. The charged silence that followed was broken only by the priest’s prayers and the lazy creaking of the scaffold. Alexander Soloviev was twitching at the end of the rope. This was what they wanted, the young merchants and the old ladies wrapped in black, the frock-coated civil servants, these were the precious seconds they had waited an hour or more to witness. Kicking and shaking and slowly turning as life was choked from him before their eyes.

  What a spectacle! Turning his back on the scaffold, Barclay began pushing through the crowd towards the line of carriages in front of the Semenovsky Barracks. It was not that he felt sympathy for Soloviev – it was only what he deserved – but the business was managed so badly. The hangman was a drunken criminal who emptied a bottle of vodka down his throat before he fumbled through his task.

  Barclay’s driver had abandoned his post for a favourable view of the execution and was now lost in the crush of spectators. After a few minutes he came puffing up, red-faced, peaked cap in hand, which he swept before the major as he bowed contritely.