City of Silence (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  From behind the panel Nicky and Alix relaxed a little. Neither of them knew who was in the chapel, but it was clear enough that these people had not come searching for them but rather seeking some sanctuary of their own. Alix pushed back her scarf and in the shadows Nicky saw, twinkling below the lace, the diamond flower pinned to her dress. Despite all of her protests, she was wearing this gift. He reached out, touched it with a fingertip and she smiled.

  “Why are you so solemn?” Konstantin asked.

  “Shh,” said Tatiana. “I am trying to pray.”

  “The angels above you are broken.”

  “So they are,” she said, looking up at the chipped plaster faces. “Now be silent, or lightning shall strike you for being such an infidel.”

  Tatiana closed her eyes, exhaled, and tried to concentrate. She asked for forgiveness first, as she always did, and then for clarity. Don’t let me forget this day, she prayed. Push it into my memory. Everything here. His face, his smile, the dust, the raindrops on his jacket, the ashes from the candles.

  His hands were back, around her again. More demanding this time, pulling her from the altar with more determination.

  “Come,” he said. “There will be time to pray when I am gone.”

  She let him steer her away from the altar and lead her across the wooden floor. Good, she thought. Let him take me. Let me go. He is so innocent and so hopeful, and may I remember that as well. Tatiana found herself suddenly weak with emotion, uncertain if she could exist another minute without blurting out the dark truth. That this was the last time he would touch her, the last time she would hear his voice. That she was not coming to Paris and he must enter his new world alone.

  The chapel only had two doors and he led her toward the back one, tucked into an even dimmer and dustier corner, far away from the angels and the candles. Away from the altar which concealed the hidden forms of Alix and Nicky. Nicky had now removed the brooch from Alix’s dress and was using the point of the largest diamond to etch their initials into the window. He was sawing the letter A into the glass with a concentrated fervor and she was thinking that if they married, she would wish for them to marry here - in this chapel, which was so simple, so sincere and so sweet. But of course that would never be allowed. When the tsesarevich of Russia married, it would be in the grandest church in the land, with a procession of thousands. His tsarina would be draped in ermine, not a veil of cobwebs.

  The door creaked as Konstantin closed it behind them and Tatiana found herself in the base of the bell tower, looking up a steep flight of stairs. The wooden steps were rotted and bowed and she wondered what brave soul had last ventured to climb them. At the top of the tower a rusty bell was tilted at such a sharp angle that she could not see its tongue. A rope, rough and frayed, extended down the staircase, so long that the end lay coiled at her feet. The light at the top of the tower promised a view of the river, a vision fit for a saint who might pause, mid-assumption, to consider the pretty, inconsequential world below.

  Why had they come to this tower? Did he intend for them to climb it?

  But no. No. Of course not. She knew from his first touch that he had brought her here for some other purpose. Something wilder and darker and more desperate and Tatiana was tired of fighting her fate. Tired of beating back grief. She sank down to the rough steps and lifted her skirt. He pulled the layers of garments which lay beneath in one direction and then the next until her naked hips and thighs slid into that gentle trough that exists in all steps, that indentation that has been worn by centuries of patiently climbing feet. It was as if the spot was designed for just this purpose.

  “Are they gone?” Alix whispered.

  “I don’t know,” said Nicky.

  “Should we leave?”

  “Not yet.” The A was finished and he had begun the second line of the N.

  “Yes, finish the initials,” Alix said, sinking back against the wall. “For this way you will always remember me, no matter what happens.”

  “Don’t say that,” Nicky said, his own voice rising above a whisper, causing her to press her palm against his lips and shake her head in warning. Whoever had been there might come back again “You will return soon to St. Petersburg,” he whispered, when she pulled her hand away. “And next time we meet we shall be married. Promise me.”

  There was nothing to say to this, nothing at all. She pointed toward the half-finished initial. “Hurry,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Hurry,” Tatiana was saying. “We don’t have much time.”

  Konstantin knew this too, even better than her. Her undressing had been somewhat ceremonial but his own clothes had been dropped or lifted or yanked aside so fast as to defy understanding. He put his knees on the bottom step and leaned into her, pushing her back into the splintered corner of a higher step, causing her to cry out. A sound he either misinterpreted or translated into some higher tongue because he did not stop kissing or pushing against her. Tatiana collapsed into the staircase, throwing back her head, looking up the dark shaft of the tower to the lightness at the top.

  “Hurry,” she whispered.

  He thrust into her. One move, direct and – despite everything – rather surprising. Her back arched and then slammed once again into the step. I shall have bruises, she thought vaguely. Scrapes. How shall I explain them and is this how the angels in the chapels got broken? He lifted her hips up and began to move in a steadier rhythm and when their eyes met, they both laughed with sheer hysteria, the laughter that comes when relief and grief and desire all meet, the sound the body makes when the mind can no longer find the words. The inevitability of finding each other, the inevitability of losing each other, and Tatiana blew him a kiss through the dusty air and then dropped her head back again. I don’t care, she thought, how many times my head is pounded against these steps. I don’t care if I am knocked insensate and left to die in the foot of this tower. They can bury me outside with the others. The nameless and the mournful. I will lie with them forever.

  He pulled out of her and she looked up, startled. Had the door opened, had they been caught? But he was only moving lower as he did sometimes in his Asian way and the sight of his head nuzzling its way down her legs burned into her mind so clearly that she knew the memory would never fade. It seemed as if someone high above them was crying and then Tatiana, her gaze moving upward, saw that it had begun to storm. The sky at the top of the tower has grown grayer and wilder. The wind wafted a diffusion of raindrops down onto them. Onto her upturned face, onto the back of Konstantin’s head.

  “Hear the thunder,” Nicky whispered, pulling Alix’s hand to his chest.

  Alix nodded, her eyes bright. “Granny says that when it thunders, it means God is angry.”

  Tatiana knew that it was here. That it would lift her, possibly not gently, and carry her away. She dropped one hand to his head, braced her feet, and cried out. Her other hand struggled to grip the wall because the intensity was frightening, so beyond anything she had ever experienced that for a fraction of a moment she wondered if she might actually be dying. She was certainly falling from a greater height than ever before, and just then her hand found the rope and tightened around it and the world became filled with sound. A single clang that reverberated through the tower, through the chapel and into the graveyard. Every hair on her arms has risen, every bone beneath her skin shuddered. Even the roots of her teeth seemed to move a little and she has been left flushed, pure, and covered with rain.

  When she opened her eyes, Konstantin was staring down at her.

  “Shit,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Run,” Nicky shouted, but Alix had already sprinted past him, had already fled from behind the priest’s alcove and was across the wooden floor, knocking the wrapped package which had been bracing the door open and sending it skidding out into the rain-soaked courtyard. Nicky had no choice but to chase her. The storm was great now, howling around them and there would be no acceptable explanation fo
r where they had been, why they would have ventured from the palace in such weather, how they might have gotten so mussed and so wet. He caught up with her just beyond the gate to the graveyard and grabbed her hand. He still held the brooch. The great diamond bounced between them, caught in the hollow of their clasped hands, cutting first into her palm and then into his.

  “Do you think anyone really heard?” Tatiana asked. They were still clutching each other in the bell tower.

  “No,” said Konstantin. He was laughing, wiping the rain from her face. “We’re too far away. I just panicked.”

  “But it is time for your boat.”

  “Yes. Soon.”

  They crept back through the chapel, with a single glance up at the angels who observed them with no change of expression. They paused at finding the door closed and the package outside, but Konstantin decided he must not have wedged it well and it had been blown free by a gust of wind. It lay in a sad state on the cobblestones, leaking puddles of green and pink, which ran together into larger puddles of gray.

  “Leave it,” Tatiana said. “It must be ruined.”

  But Konstantin reached to grasp the rough handle that the artist had made, and they walked across the lawn, down toward the river, not bothering to rush. When one was thoroughly soaked, there can no longer be any fear of getting wetter.

  The servant boat was waiting in its dock. He turned to her. He dared not kiss her, not here so close to the dock where workers from all functions within the palace were huddled under the small shelter, where anyone might recognize them. It would be the most unpleasant sort of irony to be caught now, during his last moments on the soil of the Winter Palace.

  It is lucky that it is raining, he thought. Rain hides tears.

  “I don’t know how I shall be able to live until we meet again,” he said. And then he picked up his sack and the painting, ran to the dock, and lightly leapt onto the barge. He did not look back.

  “But live you shall,” she whispered. “And so will I.”

  The Winter Palace – The Gentleman’s Enclave

  5:36 PM

  “Good God, that thunder,” Trevor murmured as a particularly distressing rumble shook the air. They were standing in a covered portico connecting the rooms of the gentleman’s enclave to the private dock, awaiting their meeting with Viktor Prakov, who was running slightly late. A condition which was rare in policemen, but apparently quite common in Russians.

  “My mum always says that thunder means God is angry,” Davy said, his eyes darting around the opulent surroundings, for even the dock was fitted with statuary and carvings and the two small boats in the slips had padded seats and canopies, and resembling no rowboats he had ever seen.

  “Then God must be angry in the extreme,” Trevor said. “What do you remember of the place, Abrams?”

  “At the risk of stating the obvious, this is the dock,” Rayley said. “The last in the line of docks used by the Winter Palace and thus any watercraft leaving from this location will not have to pass the others, or indeed many of the windows of the palace. And through those doors,” he added, gesturing back toward the building, “you will find the smoking rooms, dressing rooms, sauna and steambath, places for billiards and the other games that gentlemen enjoy.”

  “How many rooms?”

  “Impossible to guess.”

  “Not so impossible,” came a voice from the side and they all turned to see Prakov approaching from the lawns. He was walking through the downpour with little regard for personal discomfort – there was no hat on his head, nor boots on his feet, and when he stepped under the portico he made no attempt to wipe the water from his brow.

  “What matters the number of rooms if there are only two exits?” he continued. “The enclave is designed so that it is easy for a man to hide, but not so easy for him to escape. You are the British Queen’s bodyguards, I understand?”

  “Trevor Welles, Rayley Abrams, Davy Mabrey,” Trevor said as hands were shaken all around. “We appreciate you taking time to meet with us.”

  “Not much time. The next two days will place many demands on my unit.”

  “Indeed,” said Trevor. “If you could just tell us a bit more about these two exits.” He hesitated, as if wondering if he should explain why he asked, but Prakov did not inquire. The Russians did not ask the “why” of anything very often, Trevor had noticed. It was as if cause and effect were somehow severed in their minds.

  “This exit is the dock as you have doubtlessly noticed,” Prakov said brusquely. “The palace has five – one for bringing the staff in and out, one for bringing goods in and out, one for recreation, one for exalted visitors and the imperial yacht, and this one, for the private use of the gentlemen.”

  “Not guarded, I presume,” Trevor said neutrally.

  “Most certainly guarded, but not in any manner one would notice. We do not wish to make the imperial gentlemen self-conscious, after all, at least not in their hours of leisure. Come with me.”

  Mulling it all over, Trevor followed Prakov through the doors with Rayley and Davy trailing wordlessly behind. The men moved up the plush carpets along the narrow hall, struggling not to gape at the portraits of ladies in various degrees of dishabille along the walls. Davy was trying to count the doors as they walked, but abandoned the plan when the number passed twenty.

  “And here,” Prakov said when they finally arrived at the point where the hallway branched off into another angle, “is the route to the private stable.”

  “Also guarded in a discrete manner, I assume?” Trevor said and Rayley almost simultaneously asked “How many points are there within the palace where people might come or go by carriage?”

  “Twenty-two,” Prakov answered promptly. “Four meant for public entrance, such as visitors arriving for a ball, seventeen for utilitarian purposes. This is the only one which is private.”

  Trevor nodded. Viktor Prakov was scarcely a talkative fellow, but he was certainly more professional and confident than anyone they had met in the bumbling private guard, the majority of whose members had probably been placed there on the whim of the tsar. Trevor wondered what the bald man thought of the second force within the palace, whether he resented them, envied them, struggled to work with them, or merely ignored them.

  “We did not simply ask you to meet us to provide a tour,” Trevor said, “for such a simple task could have of course been carried out by any of your subordinates.”

  Prakov waited.

  “We have two pieces of information about Filip Orlov, one of the members of the tsar’s private guard,” Trevor continued. “He invited Detective Abrams to the gentleman’s enclave three days ago and told him that one of the imperial dance masters, a man by the name of Konstantin Antonovich, is his primary suspect in the ballroom murders.”

  Still no change of expression on Prakov’s face.

  Trevor fumbled for words. It was hard to talk to a man who was so utterly non-reactive. “Might I ask if the palace police share the theory that Antonovich is involved in the murders?”

  “The first two deaths were deemed suicides and the bodies have already been accepted by the families for burial,” Prakov said without emotion, or even without any particular cadence to his voice. If a machine could speak, Trevor thought, this is how it would sound. “And our investigation into the death of Cynthia Kirby is likewise drawing to a close. We intend to have her body ready for release into your custody by tomorrow, just as your Queen has requested.”

  Interesting, Trevor thought. Not only had Prakov avoided answering the question, but he had also avoided even using the word “murder.” Apparently the palace police not only lacked a suspect, but they also lacked suspicions.

  “You said you had two pieces of information, I believe?” Prakov prompted.

  “Tell him, Davy,” Trevor said.

  “Filip Orlov is with the revolution,” Davy blurted.

  For the first time Prakov’s eyes showed a flicker of a response.

  “Which revolu
tion?”

  “The Naronaya Volyaka,” Davy said. “The Volya, for short. I have been associating with the students who claim allegiance to its cause and one of them introduced Orlov as a high ranking member. The ballet dancer who was killed was one of them too. You know, Sir. The boy, Yulian Krupin.”

  An almost agonizing silence followed. They were telling the man his business, Trevor knew. Telling him that he and his police force had allowed not one but two revolutionaries close access to the imperial family. One of them even within the tsar’s private guard. But now that his brief spasm of reaction at the name “Volya” had passed, Prakov was once again completely composed. What sort man hears bad news so calmly, Trevor wondered. He is either an idiot or a saint.

  “If Krupin and Orlov got in, we think there may be others,” Davy said, perhaps pouring additional salt into the wounds of the man’s pride, but it was hard to tell. Prakov did at least finally answer.

  “If what you are telling me is true, then Orlov must-” Prakov said. “There is a grand ball tomorrow night, with hundreds –“ He broke off and took a slow breath. “Why should I trust you?”

  “We have no reason to lie,” Davy said.

  “What we have learned,” Rayley added, quietly and with extreme courtesy, “I assure you we learned only in service to our Queen.”

  Prakov looked toward the far door, the one he had indicated led to the private stables. “If what you say is true, Orlov must be arrested immediately.”

  “Perhaps not quite yet,” Trevor said. “For you see, we have come to you with a plan.”

  The Winter Palace – The Private Rooms of the Orlovs

  5:52 PM

  Women would be the death of the revolution.

  Not because they were not good fighters. There is nothing on earth so fearsome as a woman who had lost what she holds dear. Her children, lover, husband, parents… a woman so deprived would fight without hesitation, like an animal, often evidencing a ferocity few men could match. Filip had even thought that someday there would be a revolution with nothing but women and that when this day came, it would mark the end of the human race.