City of Silence (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  “Why has she lowered her standard?”

  “What?”

  “The Queen has taken down the flag bearing her royal standard.”

  “Hmmm… I hadn’t noticed,” Trevor said, squinting up at the mast. “I suppose it’s because she wants to make it clear from the moment of arrival that this is not a state visit but a personal one. Look….there it is.”

  And indeed there it was, as they eased around a small bend, the beginnings of a city. They called St. Petersburg the Venice of the east, Emma thought, all the random facts and details from her files still coming back unwarranted at strange times. Or at least the Russians called it that. She doubted the Italians would concur. But she was beginning to see a bit of what they meant, as the ship nosed its way along the bank and toward a city built on islands, bridges slowly coming into view and the number of boats along the bank increasing with each minute they sailed. She wondered if the real Venice smelled like this.

  As she and Trevor stood at the railing and watched the city grow before them, Tom soon came up, and then Davy, followed by Rayley. Finally the Queen and Princess Alix, whose agitation showed on her face. She wasn’t looking at the scenery, which she doubtless remembered well enough from her visit four years ago. She was straining only straight ahead, waiting for her first glimpse of the Winter Palace. She was also trembling, Emma noticed. Not just her hands but her whole body. Alix’s dress was pink, elaborate and overdone in Emma’s estimation, with a high collar composed of silk roses, so many and so large that she seemed lost in a mountain of organza petals. The hat was even worse, with the back ludicrously puffy and the brim so deep that her plump little face seemed to have receded within a hollow of silk. She had tried very hard to be glamorous and failed. It made Emma sad.

  The Queen’s affect was the opposite. Her Majesty opted to arrive wearing the same sort of black broadcloth mourning gown that she had worn for decades, and pointedly devoid of ornamentation. Victoria is sending a signal as well, Emma thought. She wants the Russians to know that for her this is all nothing more than another day of work.

  And then it was there, the Winter Palace. Enormous gates, grand swathes of iron fencing and behind it, a light blue building the size of which Emma had never beheld. They approached a dock and sailed past it.

  “Not this one,” the Queen said in terse explanation.

  They continued to sail. Another dock came and went.

  “Nor this,” the Queen said.

  “The palace has four separate docks along the river,” Alix whispered loudly to Emma, a statement which caused Davy’s jaw to literally drop open.

  It’s bigger than Buckingham, Emma thought. Bigger than Windsor and Sandringham and, as the third dock also slipped past them, she thought, Dear God. It is bigger than Buckingham and Windsor and Sandringham all together. It is the biggest structure I have ever seen, or ever will see. Bigger than any building in Britain. Perhaps the biggest in the world.

  The five members of the Tuesday Night Murder Games Club remained motionless and silent as they continued to sail and the Winter Palace continued to stretch. Davy was still openly gaping and Tom seemed on the verge of letting go a series of the sarcastic quips he always used to hide any unease. Rayley and Trevor were managing to maintain a sense of professional reserve, but Rayley had begun his nervous habit of blinking rapidly and, perhaps because she was standing close to him, Emma was aware that Trevor had stopped audibly breathing two docks back.

  She could only assume that the others were thinking thoughts along the same lines as her own. What the hell have we gotten ourselves into? How far off the earth have we fallen this time? We are too small to be here, too insignificant and too utterly out of our element.

  And finally the boat began to slow even more until the engines were screeching with the effort. They pulled parallel to the fourth dock. It was the largest and most ornate so far, with a wall of white marble dotted with sculpture, and evidently was the entrance point reserved for honored visitors such as themselves. Although their Russian hosts could not have know the exact hour of their arrival, a contingent of guards and workers stood ready to receive them. The Victoria and Albert, which had seemed so stately when it left London, occupied scarcely a third of length of the landing berth. A swarm of men spring into action and the yacht was quickly secured and the gangplank lowered.

  “Granny?” Alix said with uncertainty.

  “Come along, my dear,” Victoria said. “You and I must go first.” She took her granddaughter’s hand in her own, a plump black glove firmly grasping a trembling pink one and the two moved down the gangplank. Just as they reached the bottom, Victoria paused briefly and turned to look back up at the others, who were still waiting on deck.

  “I know it seems very grand,” she said. “But at least I’m not afraid to live in mine.” And with that her foot descended to the ground and they were in Russia.

  Chapter Eight

  June 18, 1889

  The Winter Palace – Ella’s Lounge

  6:27 PM

  “There is no need to fight the inevitable, Granny. I am Russian now.”

  “You are not and never shall be.”

  “It’s true. Your simple German princess is no more.”

  “You’re not even German,” Victoria said, the tremor in her voice suggesting that the Queen was on the verge of actually losing her temper. But Ella, standing haughtily before her, clearly had no plans to retreat.

  They had been welcomed in a flurry of hugs, squeals, and tears. Ella had greeted them halfway down the long promenade leading from the dock up to the palace and her joy at seeing her sister and grandmother had been touching to behold. The young grand duchess, whom Trevor considered even lovelier in person than in her portraits, then had escorted them to her private apartments for a late luncheon and it was there – amid tassels, gold gilt, great dangling prisms, and, in short, the rather flashy sort of glamour that made the very roots of Trevor’s teeth ache – that the conversation had devolved from reunion to argument with shocking haste. Now the entire group sat awkwardly in chairs scattered about the cavernous room, holding their tea cups too tightly and striving without success to ignore the royal tempest brewing around them.

  “A woman becomes whomever she marries,” Ella said. “The virgin is sacrificed on the altar of marriage and reborn as a wife. I was taught that from earliest childhood and let us think, who might have been my council on such matters? Why, I believe it was none other than you, Granny dear, and if this is true, it must also follow that a woman becomes a citizen of whatever nation she marries into. So when my mother married my father she became German, as were all the children from that union. I was German until I married Serge, and now I am Russian. Whatever position or influence I have within the walls of this palace stems from that singular fact. It is not a difficult thing to understand, no matter how determined you are to not understand it.”

  “You are the one who is being willfully foolish,” Victoria said, with ever the slightest hiss to her voice on the word “foolish.” “Your pedigree trumps that of anyone within this palace and yet you have somehow let yourself forget from hence you sprang. Heaven knows, on your father’s side you can trace your lineage all the way back to Charlemagne and any present power you have, any at all, stems from the fact that your grandmother is Queen of England.”

  “And you may as well know that I have at last made the decision to convert to Orthodoxy,” Ella plowed on, ignoring the fact that at, at least in the eyes of Trevor, the Queen was scoring the majority of points in the debate. “For it is the faith of the realm and thus the people expect it of me, especially on the high holy days. Oh, and don’t look at me like that, Alix,” she added a bit guiltily to her sister, whose mouth had dropped open at this latest declaration of defiance. “It is not really all that different from being Lutheran. We worship the same God and the same Christ, do we not? And is that not what truly matters?”

  “It is as different from Lutheranism as two faiths can possib
ly be,” the Queen said. She had grown so angry that Tom was staring at her and his own hands gripped the sides of his chair. Whether he was merely surprised to find his normally stolid monarch in such agitation or feared for the health of an elderly patient, Trevor could not say. “The rituals of Orthodoxy,” the Queen continued, “are contrived to dazzle a peasant populace, not to encourage the development of a rational mind. You may as well announce that you intend to throw you head back and bay at the moon.”

  “When we are in England, you control us all and you marry us off to suit your needs,” Ella said coldly. “But what you fail to realize is that once we are indeed married, in that very instant we move beyond your control. The continent of Europe is not your personal chessboard.”

  A beat of silence. And in it the Queen’s face changed from angry to sad.

  “If I saw the continent as a chessboard,” Victoria finally said, with a tender simplicity, “do you honestly imagine I would set forth you and Alix as pawns?”

  At the softening of her grandmother’s voice, Ella’s shoulders slumped, as if all the fight had suddenly gone from her as well. She paused in her pacing and considered the small, round woman seated before her. “Darling Granny,” she said. “I’m so happy you’re finally here and I don’t wish us to open our visit with this sort of distressing discord. But you simply must accept that Serge is my husband and that Russia is my home.” Then she turned abruptly toward the others and said “But I fear I have been rude. We’ve been so caught up in our family tussles that I have neglected to formally greet your traveling contingent.”

  They went through the circle of introductions with teacups clattering into saucers and bows and curtsys all around. It seemed a bit silly to resort back to such pageantry just after having witnessed the sort of row one might more reasonably expect from a working class family, but Trevor supposed that being in private service to the royals would be much like working behind the scenes of a theatrical. Like it or not, they were about to witness the machinations of the magic, and to see the principals devoid of their costumes and props.

  “Emma Kelly,” Ella said thoughtfully, pausing in the round of formalities to consider the girl more closely than the men. The unexpected attention seemed to fluster Emma, who blushed to the roots of her hair.

  “Emma has been tutoring me in Milton,” Alix said, surprising Trevor by even speaking. During the argument between her sister and grandmother she had sat still and ashen, undoubtedly aware that beneath this clearly well-worn debate, what the two women were truly discussing was the possibility of her own future in Russia. Besides, Trevor had never been entirely sure how Alix felt about being accompanied to St. Petersburg by three members of Scotland Yard or the ruse of presenting Emma as her governess. The necessity of their presence was an implied insult to the court her cherished Nicky would someday rule, so it seemed she might resent them all. But instead she had now leapt to her feet and had linked her arm through Emma’s as if they had been devoted companions for years.

  “Milton,” Ella said vaguely. “Most excellent. You must illuminate us all at the welcoming banquet, which I’m sure my family will be holding within a day or two in honor of our British guests.” If these last lines, especially the pointed emphasis on the words “my family,” were designed to take a final jab at the Queen, they fell short of their mark, for Her Majesty had turned her attention back to the luncheon and was merely prodding suspiciously at some sort of overblown pastry with her fork.

  “Emma will be dancing at the Tchaikovsky ball,” Alix said. “As am I.”

  “So I understand,” said Ella, smiling at her little sister. “This means you shall both meet Konstantin and your lives shall be instantaneously transformed.” Her large blue gray eyes flickered back to Emma. “But I find your name inconvenient,” she said. “Emma and Ella? Far too similar and it shall leave us all in confusion. For the remainder of your time in St. Petersburg, you must be known by your surname of Kelly.” And she laughed, but in a way that made it impossible to tell if she was truly joking, and then the royal women – Alix, Ella, and the Queen – abruptly recessed from the room into Ella’s private parlor, leaving the members of the Tuesday Night Murder Games club flattened against their seats like the survivors of a hurricane.

  “The Grand Duchess is quite something, is she not?” Rayley finally said. “It’s hard to think of the exact word.”

  “Oh, I can think of several,” Trevor said, shaking his head. “I never would have believed the Queen would have accepted such impudence from anyone.”

  Tom winked at Emma. “And what of you, Kelly? I thought you were going to faint when she turned the full force of her personality in your direction. I suppose the Grand Duchess is like Eve in the Garden of Eden – she’s been given divine authority to name us all to her liking.”

  Before Emma could reply, another set of doors swung open – Trevor was already beginning to suspect a building of this size and design would be next to impossible to guard – and a small dark-haired woman in spectacles walked in.

  “My name is Cynthia Kirby,” she said. “And the Queen has instructed me to brief you at once.”

  Trevor and Rayley exchanged a look. If being held hostage to the unfolding dramas of the royal family was not bad enough, it appeared they were now about to be lectured on their duty by a lady in waiting. The four men had leapt to their feet as she entered. Or perhaps “leapt” was not the proper word; so many women had been coming and going and the Russian divans were so demonically soft and deep that Trevor found himself growing increasingly ridiculous with every arrival. He rolled, he foundered, he flopped his way up from the cushions and onto his feet and then he struggled not to openly gasp for air in the face of the Kirby woman, who had evidently elected not to sit herself. She stood before them in the manner of a general, her legs planted far apart, her arms folded across her chest.

  “Please sit,” she said. “I shan’t, for there are only a few points to be covered. Mr. Mabrey?”

  “That’s me,” Davy croaked. “I mean, Ma’am, that is I.”

  The woman studied him over the top of her spectacles. “You do indeed look like a schoolboy, which is just as I hoped. The revolutionary group with which Yulian Krupin was affiliated, and which his brother Gregor still dominates, is rooted in the University at St. Petersburg. We have a friend there – a man by the name of Elliott Cooper who serves as a teaching assistant in their government program. He shall be your liaison.”

  Complete confusion covered Davy’s face. “Liaison, ma’am?”

  “Good heavens, haven’t they told you anything? Perhaps this meeting will not be concluded as efficiently as I had hoped.” Mrs. Kirby dropped gracelessly into a chair. Her appearance was oddly all of one note, Trevor thought, with her hair, eyes, and dress the same color of dull brown. But he supposed such blandness could prove useful in her line of work.

  “We do know that the Volya originated in the University,” Trevor said, sitting once again too, with his intrusion into the conversation earning him a look of profound gratitude from Davy. “But our understanding was that during this visit Davy would pose as the Queen’s private message boy.”

  “And so he shall,” Mrs. Kirby said. “Cooper, as his name suggests, is most thoroughly English and presented himself to the University as a visiting professor from Cambridge, which on one level is precisely what he is. But alas, the Russian universities are like everything else in Russia – insular, suspicious, and riddled with ceremony. Despite Professor Cooper’s stellar academic credentials, or perhaps because of them, it has taken him two years to gain the position of assistant to a professor named Tomasovich” She paused, as if to give them time to assimilate her barrage of information. “Tomasovich is a mentor to the students in the Volya, for his field of expertise is Marx and the Communist Manifesto. I assume you are all familiar with the Communist Manifesto.”

  “Of course we are,” Emma said quickly. At least she was. The file marked Unofficial History had been full of it.
For the benefit of the others, especially the horrified Davy, she gave a brief summary. “It advocates a completely egalitarian society and thus the overthrow of all existing governments. In this case, I presume the emphasis is on overthrowing the tsar.”

  Mrs. Kirby nodded, tossing Emma a look of grudging respect. “Tomasovich can hardly advocate revolution from his lectern, but he comes close, and Cooper, who poses as a communist sympathizer, has successfully gained the trust of both the professor and the young members of the Volya. He is prepared to introduce Davy as a student he knew back in Cambridge who is also sympathetic to their cause.”

  “You’re suggesting that our Davy is to infiltrate the Volya?” Trevor said in true disbelief.

  “Of course. Cooper is older than the boys, separated from them by both age and his position as an instructor. But this lad before us seems quite the proper sort, does he not? If they believe him to be a British comrade, they shall perhaps more readily confide in him.”

  “And why would they talk openly to a complete stranger come from a country they most likely despise?” Trevor asked. The idea not only sounded mad, but it could place Davy in the most extraordinary sort of danger.

  “Two reasons. Cooper is an accepted adjunct to the group and he will vouch for him. Secondly, the Russians brag. They can’t help themselves.” Mrs. Kirby took off her glasses, immediately stripping a decade from her appearance, and once again looked at Davy. “All you have to do, my young friend, is claim that your fellows back in England are cowardly and slow to action, nothing at all like the true revolutionaries of St. Petersburg, and then sit back and let the Russians tell you everything they know. The whole nation falls to flattery, especially if you contrast them favorably with the rest of Europe.”