by Kim Wright
But it was also romantic, Tatiana thought. This voluntary self-blinding made it easier for the woman to submit to the movements of the man, to be truly swept away, to slip off the confines of her everyday self. Not being able to see where you were going or how close you were to other couples on the floor certainly made it easier to follow, for really, under such circumstances what other choice does one have? Ella had settled back into Konstantin’s arm, and it was abundantly clear to Tatiana, if to no one else in the room, that she liked this feeling of a man’s arm around her waist, drawing her steadily in, and the gentle pressure of her hand in his. Even if the man was but a lowly dance master, even if they were surrounded by dozens of other people in the middle of the day.
Something is missing in her life, Tatiana thought. Perhaps it is the same thing that is missing in mine.
She was not jealous. When a woman is married to a powerful man and having an affair with a less powerful man, and when she is playing her dangerous game in a well-lighted room, then jealousy is an emotion she cannot afford to indulge. Besides, Ella was not a threat to her. No woman, not even a woman possessed with Ella’s pedigree, would risk dishonoring the Romanov family with an indiscretion. Not in word, not in deed, not even by implication. If Tatiana’s ankle was in a trap, Ella was buried alive, and had been since the day she first touched Russian soil.
Tatiana knew she had been staring too long. That was always her challenge when Konstantin was in the room - to remember to periodically break the spell, to sometimes look up and away. When she did, she saw that Cynthia Kirby was also on the balcony level, also looking down at the dancers, and that she too had fixed her gaze on Ella and Konstantin. The lady in waiting had seen it all: their conversation, followed by this, followed by these tight powerful swirls of the formation and Ella’s head, thrown back too far for balance, thrown back in a type of ecstasy.
I don’t like this Mrs. Kirby, Tatiana thought. She has never wanted something that she knows she cannot possess, never sinned nor broken rules and she has no compassion for those of us who have. I bet her eyes have never closed, not even when she danced or when she made love. I doubt they close when she sleeps.
The theater was often chilly, kept deliberately cool for the benefit of the performers and Tatiana always brought one of her large silk scarves with her when she came to rehearsal. She reached down to her bundle and pulled out the red one, draping it loosely around her shoulders. Konstantin looked up again, spied it, and smiled, not at her but at something above her.
She had two scarves, one red and one white. They were not only a means of keeping warm while she waited her turn to dance, but also a signal. The white one said no. But the red one said yes, that she would meet him later.
7:20 PM
“Do you like the velvet britches, or the satin? Which ones show my legs to their best advantage?”
It was two hours after the rehearsal had ended and Tatiana and Konstantin were lying in a heap of bright colored clothes, costumes that needed cleaning. The pile of discarded finery was relegated to the darkest and most hidden corner of the prop room and they had trysted here many times before. It was a luxuriously quiet and private place, for once the rehearsals were over, the dancers and musicians always emptied the theater en masse, leaving it with that strangely exaggerated emptiness that only comes after a flurry of activity has departed.
It never failed to surprise Tatiana how quickly the bubble could burst.
Besides, Konstantin liked the costumes. They not only provided a serviceable bed – albeit one that contained an occasional jab from a wayward sword or crown – but they allowed him to come to her in many forms. In the ten months of their affair, Tatiana had been ruthlessly ravished by a gypsy, coldly claimed as a spoil of war by a Prussian general, seduced by the exotic rituals of a prince of India, and thrust heavenward in the arms of a Greek god.
Today he was wearing the plumed hat of a French aristocrat, red velvet riding britches, and one boot. She sat up on her elbows to consider his latest manifestation.
“The velvet is fetching, and more practical too. The trouble with satin is that it’s so hard to grab hold of. And I don’t wish to slide off.”
He grinned and flopped down beside her, the grand hat tumbling to the side as he did so. “I can find a way to travel to the coast this summer, you know. It isn’t impossible.”
“It is.”
“All I must do is send a message to the tsarina saying that the littlest grand duchess needs extra practice. That my progress with Xenia has been so hard-won and tentative I fear two months without any dance lessons at all might knock her right back to the starting point.” He shrugged. “It’s true enough, in a way.”
“Most lies are.”
He looked at her from the corner of his eye. “You’re in a strange mood today. What’s wrong?”
What was wrong? Only a man could ask such a question, half-naked, in that particular tone of voice.
“The thought of you coming to the coast for the summer scares me,” she said. “St. Petersburg is big and busy with lots of places for us to hide, but you can’t imagine how different the Crimea will be. It’s a small world and everyone is far too aware of what everyone else is doing.” Tatiana settled back into the soft nest of ball gowns. Her own red dress was in here somewhere, among all the others. “Filip does not have so many duties in the Crimea.”
“Giving him more time for his wife,” Konstantin said flatly.
“You know I hate it,” she said. It was true. But on this trip in particular, more than ever, she must at least make a show of keeping her marriage together.
They lay for a moment in silence. “Besides,” she finally added. “A single summer is not so long.”
Now this was an outrageous lie, perhaps the worst Tatiana has ever told. A single summer could be forever. Whenever she stopped to consider it, she was not sure she would survive nine weeks trapped in the villa of her husband. Konstantin suddenly sprang up, as if the same mental image had struck him at the same time, and began to dig once again into the pile of clothing.
“I cannot seem to find my gypsy costume,” he said ruefully. “Which is a great tragedy for the mood of the day seems to require a gypsy. A snarling knife-wielding king of the gypsies, to be more precise.”
“I suppose,” she said. This was possibly their last time together before she left, and Tatiana knew she was ruining everything with her mood. He was trying very hard to entertain her, was he not? He pulled on the rough woolen traveling robe of a monk – most likely Friar Lawrence from the abandoned Romeo and Juliet ballet - and turned toward with a wicked grin.
“And what of this? Perverse enough to please you?”
“Quite perverse. Shall I dress as a nun?”
“No, too much the cliché. You shall be the grand lady who confesses her sins to the holy brother and then allows him to lead her into many more. Put your red dress back on. It’s beautiful, you know. I can hardly stand to see you in it.”
“You must be careful. Someday when we are dancing your face will give you away.”
“Or something shall.”
She laughed and fished a single red sleeve from the pile of costumes, draping it across her chest like a military sash. She would give him this much, but she would not obey him completely. She was not in the mood for costumes today. “It’s the nicest dress I’ve ever worn.”
“You’ll have nicer things yet when we’re in Paris.”
She gave him a half-hearted smile. Paris, always Paris. Whenever things were tense between them, Konstantin would talk of Paris. The only place in the world where dancers were held in as high esteem as they were in St. Petersburg, so when he fantasized about them escaping, of course he would imagine them there. He claimed that he would get a job on the stage or perhaps instructing in the most exclusive academies. If he could teach hopeless Russian girls, then surely he could teach hopeless French ones, and then Tatiana would have dresses even more elaborate than the costumes of the Winter Pa
lace.
Tatiana never challenged these dreams, since they brought him such comfort, but each time he said the word “Paris” it deepened her despair. He was so young. Not just in years, but in experience. Konstantin had spent his childhood within the walls of a ballroom, his young adult years in a theater, and he knew little of the cold and storyless outside world. He sincerely believed that a man could become whatever he pretended to be.
And now he misread her hesitation. “Perhaps you won’t have fine things at first,” he conceded. “At first we shall be poor.”
“I’ve been poor before,” she said.
“Then why do you look so sad?”
“You know the reason. Filip.”
“He ignores you.”
“He owns me. And each time we take this chance, the more likely we are to be caught.”
“That isn’t true, you know. At least not in a mathematical sense. Each time one spins the wheel of fortune, the odds of success or disaster are precisely the same, no matter how many times one has played that particular game before.”
“Spoken like a true gambler. Or at least like a man who has spun the wheel of fortune many times.”
It was a jibe. He was three years younger than her but, for his age, he had known many lovers, and often, she suspected, they had been his students. Married women – lonely, ignored, ripe for the picking.
He looked at her somberly. “I’ve never played a game quite like this one.”
“What was the Grand Duchess Ella telling you while you waltzed?”
“Are you jealous?”
“At one time she was called the most beautiful princess of Europe.”
“At one time perhaps she was,” Konstantin said. “She asked me if I knew the ballet dancers who were found dead this morning. Which I did, but only slightly. I’d seen them in rehearsals. They were good.”
“Why would she even suggest that you knew them?” Tatiana asked sharply.
“You know how these people think as well as I do,” Konstantin said. “They assume that all dancers must know each other, just as they imagine one German of course must be related to another or that if a man has taken to sea he must have met every other sailor in the world. Life beyond their own small circle is a bit of a blur to them.”
“I was there, you know.”
When he frowned in confusion, she tried to explain. “Filip told me two dancers were dead, this morning while we had breakfast. He meant to frighten me, because he suspects something between us, and I don’t care how many times you tell me I am being silly, I know that he does. He tells me that two dancers are dead and then he smiles this horrid smile with egg all over his teeth. So when he left, I went to the theater and I saw them lying there on the floor. The guards were cleaning up.”
Konstantin was still frowning, but more gently. “You thought one of them might be me? Why should I be dead?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I panicked. But the Grand Duchess Ella was there too, with that ghoul of an Englishwoman that she drags about with her everywhere she goes. She and I discussed the situation.”
Konstantin softly laughed. “Discussed? I was not aware that Ella discussed anything with anybody.”
“She discussed it with you.”
He ignored that. “The guards said it was suicide. The dancers playing Romeo and Juliet become too absorbed in the story, then have some sort of tiff and kill themselves. Rather sad and silly but what more could there be to it?”
“The Grand Duchess Ella thinks they were murdered. And I agree.”
“Come here,” Konstantin said, pulling her to him and they leaned together back into their makeshift bed. He draped the rough woolen cloth around her and pressed his knees into the hollow of hers. The robe was scratchy but warm, and familiar in a way that all the satin of the world would never be, and they often rested like this, between bouts, in this position that always reminded Tatiana of twins tucked in the same womb. She knew that he was trying to comfort her and she also knew that lately this had been an impossible task.
“Why would you think they were murdered?” he whispered into her ear.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, her own voice trembling. This morning the world had seemed very sinister to her - the knife in the girl’s hand, the careful positioning of the bodies. But here and now, in this darkened room, in the holy embrace of an unholy monk, the danger didn’t seem quite so likely. “I’m not thinking clearly. I suppose I’m just unhappy.” Tatiana set up, pushing the clothing aside, exposing her legs. “She took a picture of the bodies, you know.”
He shrugged. “All the royals are mad for their cameras.”
“I know. But it seems rather sad, don’t you think, this mania for photographing every element of their lives? It’s as if they don’t expect anything to last.”
He dragged the back of his hand up her thigh, the knuckles grazing against the muscles of her leg. It was a dancer’s trick, this stroking of not just the skin but the muscles beneath it and the motion had a French name, although Tatiana couldn’t think of it now.
“Perhaps the Grand Duchess is unhappy too,” he said. “Unhappy women are quick to believe unhappy stories.”
“That’s what she told you while you were waltzing? That she is unhappy?”
“In a way,” he said. “But I already knew.”
“You know us all better than we know ourselves, is that what you’re saying?”
He looked impossibly young when he smiled like that, like a boy and not a man, someone proud of himself for all the wrong reasons. “Whatever a woman whispers in my ear,” he said, “it is my job to have already known it.”
Chapter Six
The Royal Yacht the Victoria and Albert - Skagerrak Strait
June 16, 1889
7:28 PM
If there was anything more startling than the beauty of the afternoon it was the fact that it seemed it would never end.
Their second day aboard the royal yacht The Victoria and Albert was coming to a close and the ship was slowly making its way from the fretful waters of the North Sea into the Baltic, which was rumored to be more tranquil. “Nothing more than a big lake,” one of the sailors promised Emma and then he had pointed a short calloused finger toward a distant land mass and added “Denmark.”
She wanted to believe him. Perhaps the worst was literally behind them now. The crew all swore that as they sailed deeper into the waters of Scandinavia that the last three days of the voyage would become ever more scenic and pleasant, a gentle drift through high-walled fjords and charming fishing villages. That was when the team would have time to confer, to gather their forces and make the many decisions necessary if they were to convincingly carry out this masquerade.
The ship carrying Queen Victoria and the others had left the harbor of London at two in the morning. Yesterday morning, Emma supposed, although it was hard to think of time in that way. It had been instructed that the royal colors would not be raised until midday, when they would be far from the city, somewhere off the rocky coast of Scotland. Victoria did not like for her subjects to be made aware of the fact that the Queen was not in London. She felt her absence gave rise to anxiety among the citizenry.
For the majority of the first day Emma had not left her cabin. She had been placed in what was called the Princess Royal’s room, a lovely if somewhat overwrought little nook tucked behind the stairs with pale salmon walls and a ceiling fashioned entirely in plaster imitations of shells. The high maple bed was bolted to the floor and there was reliable electricity and a modern toilet, which she had made use of with regularity as they pulled away from the coastline of Great Britain and entered the North Sea. She was fortunate indeed compared to the men, who were apparently making do in the cramped berths where the sailors slept and had not even a porthole to help them keep their perspectives righted. When she had opened her door last night to set her tray of barely touched food into the hall, she had seen Rayley pacing. He’d reported that Davy was suffering the most and that To
m and Trevor had dragged him up on deck for a bit of light and fresh air. Staring at the horizon, Rayley said. It’s the only known cure for seasickness.
Before leaving London, Emma had bought a white blouse and slim white skirt specifically for the nautical part of the trip, the outfit purchased under the romantic impression that everyone at sea wore white, even the passengers. She now saw that – like undoubtedly many more to come – her assumption had been almost laughably faulty. Ships were dirty places, spewers of coal dust. The chairs on deck had been covered with soot when she had ventured out this afternoon, but an obliging sailor had stepped forward with a woolen blanket and draped it over the chair so that she could now sit without danger of smearing her virginal clothing, staring off in the direction of the dim coastline what was rumored to be Denmark.
Although the hour for supper was fast approaching, the intensity of the sun was enough to fool someone into thinking it was still midafternoon. They were high on the globe – certainly higher than Emma had ever traveled – and nearing the summer solstice, when the sun would be visible for a remarkable twenty hours a day, fading only to a dusklike glow during the middle of the night. One of Emma’s favorite childhood books had been about a girl from a Viking village titled “Land of the Midnight Sun,” but no amount of reading could have prepared her for the complete disorientation of a day which refused to end. She wondered what it would feel like in winter, when the opposite trick of light took hold. Endless night. A pale and watery daylight breaking through for a only few hours at noon. No wonder people went mad in such sustained darkness – drinking, weeping, killing each other, killing themselves. The fabled Russian temperament with its wild extremes of behavior, Emma thought. Perhaps much of it is the result of mere geography.