The Coronation: The Further Adventures Of Erast Fandorin (Erast Fandorin 7)

by Boris Akunin

  The eternal enemies Kirill Alexandrovich and Simeon Alexandrovich cried in a single voice: ‘No! Never!’

  The sovereign looked at his cousin with compassion and said gently: ‘Pauly, Mr Fandorin has explained quite convincingly that handing over the diamond still will not save our Mika . . .’

  Pavel Georgievich sobbed and wiped his cheek with his sleeve in an awkward gesture.

  ‘Leave us, Pauly,’ his father said sternly. ‘Wait for me in your room. You make me feel ashamed.’

  Pavel Georgievich jumped abruptly to his feet and ran out of the door. Even I had difficulty in maintaining an imperturbable expression, although of course no one even thought of looking at me.

  Poor Pavel Georgievich, he found the burden of royal responsibility hard to bear. In the education of the grand dukes and princesses the greatest emphasis is placed on self-control, the ability to keep oneself in hand under any circumstances. Since early childhood Their Highnesses are taught to sit through long, exhausting gala dinners, and they are deliberately seated beside the least intelligent and most insufferable guests. They have to listen attentively to what the grown-ups say without showing that their company is boring or unpleasant and laugh at their jokes – the more stupid the witticism, the more sincere the laughter must be. And what about the Easter triple kiss for the officers and lower ranks of their affiliated regiments! Sometimes they have to perform the ritual kiss more than a thousand times in the course of two hours! And God forbid that they should show any signs of tiredness or revulsion. But Pavel Georgievich was always such a lively and spontaneous boy. He was not good at the exercises for developing self-control and even now, although His Highness has come of age, there is a lot that he still needs to learn.

  After the door slammed shut behind the grand duke, there was a long, gloomy silence. Everyone started when the clock struck a quarter to eleven.

  ‘However, if we do not let this Lind have the Orlov,’ His Majesty said, ‘then he will kill Mika, and tomorrow he will leave the body on Red Square or at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. And that will put me, the tsar, to shame in front of the entire civilised world!’

  ‘And the entire house of Romanov with you,’ Simeon Alexandrovich remarked.

  Kirill Alexandrovich added gloomily: ‘And the whole of Russia.’

  ‘As God is my witness,’ the sovereign sighed woefully, ‘I never wanted the crown, but clearly it is my cross. It was no accident that I appeared in this world on the day of St Job the Long-Suffering. O Lord, teach me, enlighten me. What am I to do?’

  God’s answer was given by Fandorin, who enunciated a single brief phrase very clearly: ‘Rent the stone.’

  ‘What?’ asked His Majesty, raising his eyebrows in amazement.

  I also thought that I had misheard.

  ‘We have to rent the stone from Lind until the end of the coronation.’

  Simeon Alexandrovich shook his head.

  ‘He’s raving!’

  However, the eldest of the grand dukes narrowed his eyes in thoughtful concentration, trying to penetrate the meaning of this bizarre suggestion. Having failed, he asked: ‘How do you mean, “rent” it?’

  Fandorin explained dispassionately.

  ‘We have to tell Lind that his terms have been accepted, but for obvious reasons they cannot be met before the coronation. And therefore, for each day of delay he will receive a certain sum of money, amost substantialone – as ifwe are renting the Orlov from him. There is aweek still to go until the coronation, is there not?’

  ‘But what will that give us?’ asked Georgii Alexandrovich, clutching his magnificent moustache.

  ‘What do you mean, Georgie – time!’ explained Kirill Alexandrovich. ‘A whole week of time!’

  ‘And a better chance of saving the child,’ Fandorin added. ‘Our terms will be as follows: the payments are made daily, and at each handover we must have unequivocal proof that the boy is alive. That is seven extra d-days of life for His Highness. And seven chances to pick up a thread that will lead us to the doctor. Lind may be extremely cunning, but he can make a mistake. I shall be on the alert.’

  Georgii Alexandrovich jumped to his feet and drew himself up to his full impressive height. ‘Yes, now I see that it is an excellent idea!’

  The idea really did seem most felicitous – not even Simeon Alexandrovich could find any objections to make against it.

  ‘And I will assign my most capable agent as an intermediary,’ Karnovich suggested.

  ‘I have genuine lions in the Department of Security,’ the governor general of Moscow immediately retorted. ‘And they know the city very well, unlike your Tsarskoe Selo carpet scrapers.’

  ‘I b-believe it would be best if I were to take on the role of the intermediary,’ Erast Petrovich said quietly. ‘Naturally, in some kind of disguise. I know Moscow very well, and I know Lind’s habits too.’

  Kirill Alexandrovich put an end to the argument by declaring firmly: ‘We will decide this later. The important thing is that now at least we have some kind of plan of action. Nicky, does it have your approval too?’

  The questionwas clearly asked for form’s sake, for His Majesty had never been known to object to anything that had been approved by his eldest uncle.

  ‘Yes, yes, Uncle Kir, absolutely.’

  ‘Excellent. Sit down, Colonel, take the code and write this message . . .’ said His Highness, clasping his hands behind his back and striding across the room. ‘“Agreed. We need a respite of seven days. For each day we are willing to pay a hundred . . . no, two hundred thousand roubles. Payment by daily instalments, in any place at any time, but the prisonermust be produced.” Well, how’s that?’ he asked, not addressing the question to his royal relatives, but to Fandorin.

  ‘Not bad,’ Fandorin replied most impudently to the commander of the Imperial Guard. ‘But I would add: “Otherwise there will be no deal.” Lind must understand we acknowledge that he has a strong hand and are prepared to pay a high price, but are not prepared to jump to his every beck and call.’

  Our exalted visitors did not go home even after taking this difficult decision, for Fandorin expressed the opinion that a reply from Lind would follow almost immediately, either by semaphore light signal, telegraph – there was an apparatus in the Alexandriisky Palace – telephone call or some other, entirely unusual means. He said that on one occasion in similar circumstances a message from the doctor had come flying in through the window, attached to an arrow fired from a great distance.

  Just imagine it – the autocrat of all Russia, the admiral-general of the fleet, the commander of the royal guards and the governor general of Moscow waiting patiently for some adventurer to deign to reply to them! I’m sure that nothing of the sort had happened in Russian history since the negotiations with the Corsican at Tilsit – but at least Bonaparte was an emperor.

  In order not to waste time, the grand dukes began instructing their nephew the emperor in how to receive the foreign ambassadors and monarchswho had arrived for the celebrations. These meetings constituted the main political significance of the coronation, since it is quite common for extremely delicate questions of interstate relations to be decided, highly responsible diplomatic initiatives to be launched and new alliances to be concluded under the guise of ceremonial audiences.

  His Majesty definitely still lacked experience in such subtleties and was in need of guidance and instruction. Not to mention the fact that the late sovereign, not having a very high opinion of the tsarevich’s intellectual abilities, had not felt it necessary to initiate him into the secrets of higher diplomacy. For example, not until he had already ascended the throne, and even then not immediately, did the newemperor learn that in some mysterious fashion the direction of Russian foreign policy had been completely reversed: although to all appearances we remained a friend of His Majesty the Kaiser, we had concluded a secret defence pact with France, Germany’s most bitter enemy. And this was by no means the only surprise awaiting the young successor to
the throne.

  The briefing was extremely sensitive in nature and, having ascertained that everything necessarywas on the table, I thought it best to withdraw. The sensitivity arose not so much from the secrecy of the information as from the intimate family tone that the conversation assumed. His Imperial Majestywas actually not all that quick at absorbing what he was told, and his most august uncles began losing patience with their nephew, sometimes employing expressions that might perhaps be permissible between close relatives but are unthinkable in the presence of servants.

  Well, I had my own guests, who might be less eminent but were far more demanding. Having installed Mr Fandorin, Colonel Karnovich and Prince Glinsky in the large drawing room, where my assistant Somov served them coffee and cigars, I went to the servants’ parlour, a small, cosy little room located beside the kitchen on the ground floor. The governor general’s butler Foma Anikeevich, the senior grand duke’s butler Luka Emelyanovich, His Majesty’s valet Dormidont Seleznyov and Fandorin’s Japanese servant Masa were taking tea there. I had asked Mademoiselle Declique to look in on my guests from time to time to make sure that they did not feel abandoned – and also to give the poor woman, who was crushed by the misfortune that had overtaken her, something to keep her occupied. I know only too well from my own experience that at moments of such moral suffering there is no better medicine than performing mundane duties. It helps one to keep control.

  On entering the servants’ parlour, in addition to the pale but evidently quite calm governess, I also found Mr Freyby there, sitting a little apart from the general group with his interminable book in his hands. But there was not really anything to be surprised at in that. It was raining outside, the English gentlemen had gone for their enforced promenade, and Mr Freyby had no doubt grown bored of sitting in his room. Every butler knows that the servants’ parlour is something like a drawing room or, to put it in the British manner, a club for the senior servants.

  For a brief moment I was perturbed by the Englishman’s presence, since I was intending to hold my own secret council meeting with my guests, but then I remembered that Mr Freyby did not understand a single word of Russian. Very well, let him sit there and read.

  We were served by the new footman Lipps, whose experience and level of training I had not yet had time to ascertain. He himself understood perfectly well the importance of the examination to which he was being subjected, and he did everything immaculately. I observed him with as critical an eye as possible but failed to spot any blunders. I told Lipps to wait outside the door, for the conversation was not intended for his ears, and when something had to be brought in or taken away, I rang the bell. The man from the Baltic did what was required quickly but without hurrying – that is exactly as it should be done, and disappeared behind the door again.

  You could probably not find judges of the servant’s art sterner and better informed than my guests anywhere in the world. And that applied in particular to the venerable Foma Anikeevich.

  I ought to explain that we servants have our own hierarchy, which does not depend at all on the status of our masters, but exclusively on the experience and merits of each one of us. And in terms of this hierarchy beyond all doubt the most senior among us was Foma Anikeevich, butler to Simeon Alexandrovich, the youngest of His Majesty’s uncles. Luka Emelyanovich and I were approximately on the same level, while Dormidont, for all the brilliance of the position that he held, was regarded in our circle as still an apprentice. He knew his place and sat there modestly without leaning back in his chair, trying to listen to everything and not speak too much. The general opinion concerning him was that he was competent, observant, capable of learning and would go a long way. He came from a good court servant family, which was obvious from his given name and patronymic – Dormidont Kuzmich. At christening we hereditary servants are all given the simplest of the old names, so that the order of theworld will be preserved and every human will have a name to suit his calling. What kind of servant or waiter could be called Vsevolod Apollonovich or Evgenii Viktorovich? That would only cause hilarity and confusion.

  In the year and a half of the new reign Dormidont had grown tremendously in the opinion of court connoisseurs. For instance, there was the important incident in Livadia, immediately after the death of the previous sovereign, when the new emperor, being in a rather distraught state, almost received the visitors who had come to pay their condolences in his shoulder straps and without his black armband. Seleznyov caught His Majesty by the elbow when the doors were already open, and in five seconds changed the straps for epaulettes and even managed to attach mourning crêpe to His Majesty’s shoulder knot. What an embarrassing faux pas that would have been!

  But of course he still has a long way to go to reach the level of high-flying eagles like Foma Anikeevich or the late Prokop Sviridovich. Foma Anikeevich endures the heavy cross of being attached to an individual like Simeon Alexandrovich. In a word – his lot is not to be envied. The number of times that Foma Anikeevich has saved His Highness from shame and scandal! If the governor general’s rule still possesses any authority in Moscow, it is only thanks to the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna and his butler.

  And our circle tells legendary stories about Prokop Sviridovich, who served as a valet to Tsar Alexander the Liberator.

  Once, during the Balkan campaign, in the middle of the third battle of Plevna, a stray Turkish grenade fell right in front of the sovereign, who happened at that moment to be taking his afternoon snack. Prokop Sviridovich was standing close by, just as he ought to have been, holding a tray on which there was a cup of broth, a bread roll and a napkin.

  Suddenly this ball of fire appeared out of nowhere! It fell into a small hollow overgrown with grass, hissing, hopping up and down and spitting smoke, all set to go off bang at any moment. The entire entourage froze and the butler was the only one not to lose his head: without dropping his tray, he took two short steps towards the hollowand poured the broth onto the grenade! The fuse went out. The most remarkable thing is that His Majesty, engrossed in his snack, did not even notice this incident and was only surprised at how little broth there was in the cup that was served to him. Kommissarov was awarded a noble title for deflecting the would-be regicide Karakozov’s pistol, but Prokop Sviridovich ended up, as simple folk say, with twice nothing because none of the witnesses – the duty generals and aides-de-camp – bothered to explain anything to the tsar. They were ashamed that a butler had proved pluckier and more resolute than them, and Prokop Sviridovich was not one to boast of his achievements.

  However, this outstanding servant demonstrated even greater bravery on the front of intimate relations. You might say that he saved the peace and tranquillity of the imperial family. On one of the empress’s saint’s days His Majesty committed a serious blunder: as he took her present out of his pocket – it was a ring with a large sapphire in the form of a heart and the empress’s initials – he dropped another ring that was absolutely identical except that it bore the initials of the Princess Tverskaya.

  ‘What’s that, Sandy?’ the empress asked, peering short-sightedly at the small round shape that had gone tumbling across the carpet and taking her lorgnette out of her handbag.

  The sovereign was dumbstruck and had no idea what to say. But Prokop Sviridovich quickly bent down, picked up the ring and swallowed it on the spot, after which he politely explained: ‘I beg your pardon, Your Imperial Highness, I dropped one of my catarrh lozenges. I have been having terrible trouble with my stomach.’

  That’s the sort of man he was. The surgeon Pirogov himself cut the ring out of his stomach later.

  Itwas precisely Prokop Sviridovich’s example that inspired me last yearwhen, as I dare to think, I rescued Georgii Alexandrovich from an almost identical delicate situation involving a letter from the ballerina Snezhnevskaya. Thank God, paper is not sapphire, and so no surgical intervention was required.

  When I joined the honourable company, they were discussing the imminent festivities. Dorm
idont, who was clearly excited, and no wonder – he did not often have an opportunity to speak in such company – was telling the others something interesting about the sovereign. Foma Anikeevich and Luka Emelyanovich were listening benignly. The Japanese was drinking his tea from the saucer, puffing out his cheeks and goggling wildly. Mademoiselle was nodding politely, but I could see from her eyes that her thoughts were far away – I believe I have already mentioned that, for all her self-restraint, she did not have much control over the expression of her eyes. Mr Freyby was puffing away comfortably on his pipe and leafing through the pages of his book.

  ‘. . . toughen their characters,’ Dormidont was saying just as I walked into the servants’ parlour. When he saw me he sat up respectfully and continued: ‘They themselves are very superstitious, but they want to get the better of destiny, at any price. They deliberately arranged the arrival in Moscowfor an unlucky day, the festival of St Job the Long-Suffering, and the move from the city to the Kremlin for the thirteenth, although it could easily have been earlier. I think it’s all wrong – what point is there in tempting fate? You’ve seen for yourselves how Saint Job’s day turned out yesterday.’ And he gave me an eloquent glance, evidently feeling it was inappropriate to comment in greater detail on the disaster that had overtaken the Green Court.

  ‘What do you say to that, Luka Emelyanovich?’ Foma Anikeevich asked.

  Kirill Alexandrovich’s butler, a stolid and dignified man, thought for a moment and said: ‘Well now, strengthening the will is no bad thing for a monarch. His Majesty could do to have a firmer character.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ Foma Anikeevich asked with a shake of his head. ‘I think it’s not good. Ruling is like living: it should be done naturally and joyfully. Fate is kind to people like that. But if someone calls down misfortune on his own head, Fate heaps the dark clouds up over him. Our state isn’t exactly a cheery place in any case, and if the sovereign himself starts prophesying gloom and doom . . . And then again, Her Majesty has a heavy and joyless character. When the tsar grows a bit older and stronger, he’ll choose ministerswho are just as gloomy and unlucky. Every one knows the tsar’s kennel man is just like the tsar.’