by Kim Wright
“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 annoy
ed 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. “
“Why should it take time?” Gregor asked. “Her father can sign anything he wishes into law with the stroke of a pen.”
Their plan was to demand the right for the serfs to form collectives on the farms where they worked, collectives which would allow them to bargain for a greater percentage of the profits. The idea had occurred to Gregor during his brief and unsatisfactory attempt to organize the rural workers. Filip considered this a rather ridiculous goal, largely because there was absolutely no evidence suggesting that the serfs wished to form collectives. In fact, Filip, who unlike the others had spent a good deal of time in the countryside, strongly suspected that if you walked out into a muddy field and asked the nearest farmer if he wished to form a collective allowing him to negotiate with his land owner over profit distribution percentages on future harvests, the man would simply stare at you. He would be more likely to tell you he wanted a woolen scarf or a bottle of vodka or a new rope for his wagon. But when Filip had suggested to the Volya in their last meeting that they should use the kidnapping to force the tsar to distribute free grain from the country’s vast storehouses, this idea had been met with derision. Gregor had said that their aim should be a lasting change in the law, not a one-time gift, and the others had nodded, with Vlad going so far as to give Filip a look of open contempt.
“It takes but a stroke of the pen to sign a law,” Filip conceded. “But to create a force of officers spread out across the rural district ensuring this law is actually carried out will take far more time. Especially in light of the fact that the farmers have not requested these collectives and may have to be educated as to their long-term advantages. “
“You’re saying we must keep the little duchess the whole time?” Gregor said with audible distress. “Administration is a tedious process.”
“I’m saying that you are acting under the illusion that we must hold her for only a few hours, while her frantic family scrambles to meet our demands. But we are not requesting a simple ransom. If you are seeking true reform, including a system to assure that it continues, this could take weeks or even months. The child must live somewhere. Perhaps Vlad can take her home with him. Turn her into yet another little sister.”
Vlad scowled, just as Filip knew he would. “She will eat potatoes, half rotted potatoes, so that she knows how her people struggle.”
“And this what your mother served at the dinner table last night? Half rotted potatoes?”
Vlad’s scowl deepened. “What my family ate for dinner last night is not the point.”
“Is it not, comrade?”
“Well we certainly can’t hold her for weeks,” Gregor said, wearily wiping his brow for the day was warm and he had long ago lost track of how many times the serving girl had refilled his glass. “Perhaps Filip is right that we are better off demanding merely the law and a payment of money. That way, we have means to fund the collectives ourselves, rather than depending upon the government.”
“That does seem more prudent,” Filip said. “A law and a great wad of money. Things the tsar can produce in an instant. With any luck Xenia will be home by the break of dawn and the Volya will have funding for a year’s worth of good works.”
“Do you know her?” Vlad abruptly asked.
“Of course. I guard the entire family.”
“You have sympathy for her. Perhaps that influences your recommendations.”
Filip shrugged. “I have no particular sympathy for this girl. No more than I have for any of them.”
“What is she like?”
“Actually, comrade, her character reminds me of your own.”
Vlad bristled. “I find it hard to believe that the daughter of the tsar bears any semblance to a son of the revolution,” Vlad said.
“She has the impatience of youth,” Filip continued, as if Vlad not spoken. “And a certain air of entitlement that most people find –“
“All right, all right, this is getting us nowhere,” Gregor said quickly, sitting up in his chair, for Filip had pushed too far and Vlad could be impulsive when angered. “We shall take the girl to the warehouse as planned, with the understanding she cannot remain there long. And we ask for…how much money? It must be enough to fund our work with the collectives, just as Filip said, but no one must ever know the ransom was paid to the Volya. So what is the right amount? Perhaps twenty thousand rubles?”
“Thirty thousand,” Vlad countered.
“But is that too much?”
Vlad shook his head. “We must be bold. He will surely pay it. She is his daughter, after all.”
“You are right. Thirty thousand.” Gregor looked across the table at Filip. “And why do you chuckle? What do you find so funny?”
“Make it a hundred,” Filip said. “Thirty thousand rubles is less than the tsarina spends on a gown.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The Winter Palace – The Chapel of the Mournful
5:05 PM
“Please don’t tremble,” Nicky said. “Everyone is so preoccupied with the ball that they won’t even notice we are missing.”
She was indeed trembling, so violently that her small pearl earbobs bounced against her cheeks. She had run through the rain from the palace to the chapel, which, just as he described, stood free and separate from the Winter Palace and was surrounded by a graveyard. Nicky had been waiting for her there, his thin frame pressed inside the enclave and he held out his hands as she approached, pulling her under the protection of the arch.
“Come in,” he said, refusing to release her and thus reduced to awkwardly pushing against the door with his shoulder. “It’s the last place they’ll look.”
She entered the chapel, then, after a quick look around to make sure neither of them had been followed, he went in behind her. The room was terribly dark, but from what she could see, the wooden floor and plain glass windows reminded Alix of the humble country churches of Germany. She turned to him in wonder.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“Shall we light a candle?”
She nodded and tiptoed to the altar where a box of the thin white tapers lay. When she had safely reached the table he closed the door, and they were engulfed in gloom.
“Here’s one for my mother,” she said, striking a match and bringing it to the ragged strip of cotton at the top, then pushing the candle into the pile of sand. “And I must add one for my sister and my brother.”
Nicky moved beside her. She has had much loss for one so young, he thought. His parents and his siblings were all alive, a condition which suddenly struck him as blessed and rare.
“For my grandfather,” he said solemnly, picking up a candle of his own. “I pray I will be even half the tsar he was.”
“Light it from the one for my mother,” she said. “For hers is the soul I most want to emulate.”
He dipped his own candle to the tremulous light of hers. “Then they shall be our personal saints,” he said. “I feel their blessing pouring down on us already. Do you?”
But before she could answer, they heard the sound of footsteps approaching, feet running across the cobblestone courtyard leading up to the chapel door. Nicky grabbed Alix’s hand and pulled her into the priest’s alcove behind the altar. It was dusty and full of cobwebs, with a window smudged by so many mon
ths of neglect that it no longer functioned as a window, letting in little light and allowing only a partial view of the yard. The dimensions of their hiding place were so small that they were pressed together and she looked at him with wide, questioning eyes.
The door swung open, bringing with it a gust of damp heavy air, which extinguished the candles, leaving Alix and Nicky saintless and Konstantin and Tatiana laughing and dripping on the threshold of the chapel.
“I told you,” he said. “No one ever comes here.”
“It’s dark,” she said. “There must be some sort of illumination?”
Konstantin dropped the sack he carried and then wedged the wrapped package holding the painting into the doorway, propping it open to give them a bit of light. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It looks too old and rarely used.”
“They call this the Chapel of the Mournful,” Tatiana said. “How did you hear of it? It’s where those who have lost something stop to pray.”
“Where do those who have found something pray?” he whispered, sliding his hands around her waist. He was happy, shaking the raindrops from his hair like a dog. He has the ticket in one pocket, she thought. And the letters of introduction from the duchess in the other. He shall catch transport from the servant’s dock into town, and then the train, and then, on the morrow, he shall walk the streets of France.
“I want to light a candle,” she said abruptly, pulling from his embrace and walking toward the altar. “Shall you?”
“No, for I can think of nothing to mourn,” he said, squinting up through the murky light at a portrait of an especially regretful looking prophet, who had pressed his long thin fingertips together and rolled his flat dark eyes toward the heavens.