by Boris Akunin
We went over to the outside wall and the lieutenant stood on my shoulders and shouted out of the window in a stentorian voice for a long time, but we clearly could not be heard from the street. Then we started hammering on the door. It was covered with felt on the inside, and our blows sounded muted. We could not hear a single sound from the outside.
Secondly, I was depressed by the stupidity of the situation in which we found ourselves. Yesterday Mademoiselle Declique was supposed to have identified Lind’s location; today Fandorin would carry out his operation to rescue Mikhail Georgievich; and I was sitting here like a mouse in a trap, all thanks to my own stupidity.
And thirdly, I was very hungry. After all, we had not eaten supper the day before.
I sighed involuntarily.
‘You, Ziukin, are a fine fellow,’ Endlung said in a voice hoarse from shouting. ‘That’s what I’ve always said about people like you – still waters run deep. A man for the lovely ladies, a smart comrade and no sniveller. Why the hell are you a menial servant? Join us on the Retvizan as a senior quartermaster. Our lads will give you a hearty welcome – I should think so, grand ducal butler. We’d bring all the other ships down a peg or two. Really, I mean it. You could transfer from court service to the navy – that can be arranged. You’d be accepted as an equal in the mess. Just how much longer can you carrying on pouring coffee into other people’s cups? We’d have great fun, by God we would. I remember you have no trouble with the ship rolling and pitching. Ah, Ziukin, you haven’t been to Alexandria!’ The lieutenant rolled his eyes up and back. ‘Himmeldonnerwetter, the brothels they have there! You’d be sure to like it, with your taste for petite ladies – they serve up little dolls that you can sit on the palm of your hand, but they still have the full set of tackle. I tell you, a tiny little waist like that, but up here they’re like this, and like that!’ He demonstrated with rounded gestures. ‘I myself have always adored well-built women, but I can understand you too – the petite ones have their own special attraction. Tell me about Snezhnevskaya, as one comrade to another.’ Endlung put his hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. ‘What has that Polish girl got that that gives them all such a thrill? Is it truewhat they say, that at moments of passion she makes special sounds that drive men insane, the same way the sirens’ song affected Odysseus’ companions? Comeon!’Henudgedmewith his elbow and winked at me. ‘Paulie says he didn’t hear any special kind of chanting during their only date, but Paulie’s still a pup – he probably wasn’t able to arouse genuine passion in that little Polish piece of yours – and you’re a man of experience. Come on, tell me. What is it to you? We’re not going to get out of here alive anyway. I’d really like to know what kind of sounds they are.’ And the lieutenant broke into song: ‘I hear the sounds of a Polish girl, the heavenly sounds of the beautiful Pole.’
Of course I did not know anything about any passionate sounds supposedly produced by Izabella Felitsianovna, and even if I had, I would not have revealed what I knew about such matters. I tried to indicate this by assuming the appropriate expression.
Endlung sighed in disappointment.
‘So it’s a lie? Or are you just being cagey? All right, don’t tell me if you don’t want to, although that’s not the way good comrades behave. Sailors don’t play cagey like that. You know, when you don’t see dry land for months at a time, it’s good to sit in the mess, telling each other all sorts of stories . . .’
There was a mighty rumbling of bells from somewhere far away, as if it was coming from the very bowels of the earth.
‘Half past nine,’ I said excitedly, interrupting the lieutenant. ‘It has begun!’
‘I’mso unlucky,’ Endlung complained bitterly. ‘I’mnever going to see a tsar crowned, even though I am a gentleman of the bedchamber. I was still in the Corps at the last coronation, and I won’t live until the next one – the tsar’s younger than I am. I really wanted to see it! I even have a ticket for a good spot put away. Right opposite the porch of the cathedral. I expect they’re coming out of the Cathedral of the Assumption right now, aren’t they?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘they’ll be coming out of the cathedral later. I know the entire ceremony off by heart. Would you like me to tell you about it?’
‘I should say so!’ the lieutenant exclaimed, pulling his legs up under him, Turkish style.
‘Well then,’ I began, trying to recall the schedule of the coronation. ‘At the present moment Sergii, the Metropolitan of Moscow, is addressing His Majesty and explaining to him the heavy burden of serving as the tsar, and also the great mystery of anointment. In fact he has probably already finished. In the place of honour, by the royal gates, among the gold-embroidered court uniforms and pearl-trimmed ceremonial dresses, there are simple white peasant shirts and modest crimson kokoshnik head-dresses – these are the descendants of the heroic Ivan Susanin, saviour of the Romanov dynasty, who have been brought here from the province of Kostroma. And now the emperor and empress proceed along the scarlet carpet towards the thrones, set high up facing the altar, and a special throne has been installed for Her Majesty the dowager empress. Today the emperor is wearing his Preobrazhensky Regiment uniform with a red sash over his shoulder. The empress is wearing silver-white brocade and a necklace of pink pearls, and her train is carried by four pages of the bedchamber. The tsar’s throne is an ancient piece of work, made for Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and it is known as the Diamond Throne because there are eight hundred and seventy diamonds embedded in it, as well as rubies and pearls. The foremost dignitaries of the empire hold the state regalia on velvet cushions: a sword, a crown, a shield and a sceptre surmounted by the illustrious Orlov diamond.’ I sighed, closed my eyes and saw the sacred stone there in front of me, as large as life. ‘It is absolutely clear, as transparent as a teardrop, with a very slight greenish-blue tinge, like seawater in sunlight. Weighing almost two hundred carats and shaped like half an egg, only larger, there is no more beautiful diamond in the entire world.’
Endlung listened as if he were spellbound. I must confess that I also got carried away and went on for a long time describing to my appreciative listener the entire great ceremony, occasionally checking my watch in order not to get ahead of events. And just at the very moment when I said ‘And now the emperor and empress have come out onto the porch and are performing the low triple bow to the ground before the entire people; and now there will be an artillery salute,’ there really was a rumble of thunder in the distance, and it lasted for several minutes for, according to the ceremonial, the cannon had to fire one hundred and one times.
‘How wonderfully you described it all,’ Endlung said with feeling. ‘As if I had seen it all with my own eyes. I just didn’t understand about the lacquered box and the man turning the handle.’
‘I don’t understand that toowell myself,’ I admitted.’ However, I have seen with my own eyes the announcement in the Court Gazette that the coronation will be recorded using the very latest cinematographic apparatus, for which a special handler has been hired. He will turn the handle, and that will produce something like moving pictures.’
‘What will they think of next?’ said the lieutenant, squinting wistfully at the grey window. ‘Well, now they’ve stopped their clattering, I can hear the gurgling in my belly.’
I remarked guardedly: ‘Yes, indeed. I feel really hungry. Are we really going to die of hunger?’
‘Oh, come on, Ziukin,’ my fellow prisoner protested. ‘We won’t die of hunger; we’ll die of thirst. A man can live two or even three weeks without food. Without water we won’t even last three days.’
Mythroatwas indeed feeling dry, and meanwhile itwas getting rather stuffy in our little cell. Endlung had taken off his woman’s dress a long time ago, leaving himself in nothing but his drawers and a close-fitting undershirt with blue and white stripes – what is known as a singlet. Now he even took off his singlet, and I saw a tattoo on his powerful shoulder – an entirely natural representation of a man’s privates wi
th varicoloured dragonfly wings.
‘They drew that for me in a Singapore brothel,’ the lieutenant explained when he noticed my embarrassed glance. ‘I was still a warrant officer at the time. I did it for a bet, to show off. Now I can never marry a respectable woman. It looks as though I’m going to die a bachelor.’
This last sentence, however, was spoken without the slightest trace of regret.
I spent the entire second half of the day walking around the cell, with the torments of hunger, thirst and inactivity becoming worse and worse all the time. From time to time I tried shouting out of the window or banging on the door, but with no result.
In his gratitude for my description of the coronation, Endlung entertained me with endless stories of shipwrecks and uninhabited islands where sailors of various nationalities had died slow deaths without food or water. It had been dark for a long timewhen he started a heart-rending story about a French officer who was forced to eat his companion in misfortune, the ship’s quarter-master.
‘And what do you think?’ the half-naked gentleman of the bedchamber said brightly. ‘Afterwards Lieutenant Du Bellet testified in court that the quartermaster’s meat was wonderfully tender, with a fine layer of fat, and tasted like young pork. The court acquitted the lieutenant, of course, taking into account the extreme circumstances and also the fact that Du Bellet was the only son of an aged mother.’
At that point the instructive tale was broken off because the door of the cell suddenly opened without a sound, and we both blinked in the bright light of a torch. The blurred shadow that appeared in the doorway spoke in the voice of Foma Anikeevich: ‘I beg your pardon, Afanasii Stepanovich. Yesterday, of course, I recognised you under the ginger beard, but it never even entered my head that things could end so badly. Just nowat the reception in the Faceted Chamber I happened to hear two habitués of this establishment whispering to each other and laughing as they recalled the lesson they had given to two “Guardians”, and I wondered if they could be talking about you.’ He came into the dungeon and asked solicitously: ‘How have you managed here, gentlemen, with no water, food or light?’
‘Badly, very badly!’ Endlung exclaimed and threw himself on our rescuer’s neck. I suspect that such impetuousness demonstrated by a sweaty gentleman wearing nothing but his drawers can hardly have beenmuch to Foma Anikeevich’s liking.
‘This is our court’s gentleman of the bedchamber, Filipp Nikolaevich Endlung,’ I said. ‘And this is Foma Anikeevich Savostianov, butler to His Highness the governor general of Moscow.’ Then, with the necessary formalities concluded, I quickly asked about the most important thing: ‘What has happened to Mikhail Georgievich? Has he been freed?’
Foma Anikeevich shrugged. ‘I know nothing about that. We have our own misfortune. Prince Glinsky has shot himself. A terrible disaster.’
‘How do you mean, shot himself?’ I asked, astonished. ‘Did he not fight a duel with Lord Banville?’
‘As I said, he shot himself. He was found in the Petrovsko-Razumovsky Park with a gunshot wound in the heart.’
‘So the little cornet was unlucky,’ said Endlung, starting to pull on his dress. ‘The Englishman didn’t miss. He was a grand lad, even if he was a queer.’
15 May
‘. . . and also the assistant pantry man broke the dish for game from the Sèvres service. I have already ordered him to be fined half a month’s pay; anything further is at your discretion. And then there is Her Highness’s maid Petrishcheva. The footman Kriuchkov reported that she had been seen in the bushes with Mr Fandorin’s valet in a quite unambiguous position. I did not take any measures, since I do not know how you usually deal with behaviour of that sort . . .’
‘The first time, a reprimand,’ I said, looking up from the plate to explain to Somov. ‘The second time, out on her ear. If she has served the time, severance pay. We’re very strict with that sort of thing.’
It was just getting light outside, and the lamp was lit in the kitchen. I ate some reheated soup with great gusto and then applied myself to some cutlets. More than twenty-four hours without a single bite to eat is certainly no joke.
After Foma Anikeevich released Endlung and me from our incarceration, the lieutenant’s path and mine had parted. He went to the Variety Theatre to change his clothes. He had invited me too, saying that the girls slept in rooms at the theatre. They would give us food and drink, and show us a bit of affection.
But I had more important business to deal with.
And, moreover, this business did not include household concerns, so I listened to my assistant rather inattentively.
‘How did the coronation go?’ I asked, trying to work out if Somov might know something about the previous day’s operation. He ought not to, but he was far from stupid; in fact he seemed quite shrewd to me. But in any case he did not ask a single question about the reasons for my absence. Perhaps I could simply ask casuallywhether Mikhail Georgievich had been brought back from Ilyinsk?
‘Absolutely magnificent. But –’ Somov lowered his voice ‘– some of our people are saying there were bad omens . . .’
That put me on my guard. Bad omens on such a day, that is no trivial matter. A coronation is an exceptional event, every minor detail is significant. Among the court servants there are fortune-tellers who will lay out cards for the entire course of the ceremonies, hour by hour, in order to determine how the reign will proceed and when during its course convulsions can be expected. This we can call superstition, but there are other signs that cannot simply be dismissed. For instance, during the coronation of Alexander the Liberator a bottle of champagne suddenly burst for no reason at all on a table at the evening reception – it was like a bomb exploding. At that time, 1856, bombers had still not been heard of, and so no one knew how to interpret the incident. Its significance only became clear much later, after a quarter of a century. And at the last coronation the sovereign placed the crown on his head before he was supposed to, and our people whispered that his reign would not be a long one. And it was not.
‘First of all,’ Somov began, with a glance at the door, ‘when the hairdresser was arranging Her Majesty’s crown on her coiffure, he was so excited that he pushed too hard on one hairpin, and the empress cried out. He pricked her so badly that there was blood. And then, when the procession had already begun, the chain of His Majesty’s Order of St Andrew broke, and it fell on the ground! Only our people know about the hairpin, but many people noticed the incident with the order.’
Yes, that is not good, I thought. However, it could have been worse. The main thing was that the crowning of the tsar had taken place, and Doctor Lind had not disrupted this supremely solemn festivity after all.
‘What about the Englishmen?’ I enquired vaguely, unsure whether anyone at the Hermitage knewanything about the duel.
‘Lord Banville has left. Yesterday at noon. He did not even attend the coronation. He simply left a note for His Highness and moved out. He looked very pale and angry, as if he was offended about something or unwell. But he left extremely generous gratuities for all the senior personnel. For you, Afanasii Stepanovich, a gold guinea.’
‘Change it into roubles and share it equally between Lipps and the two coachmen, from me. They have all worked very well,’ I said, deciding that I did not want any gratuity from that murderer. ‘And what of Mr Carr?’
‘He is still here. His Lordship even left his butler with Mr Carr – he left alone.’
‘And is Mademoiselle Declique missing her pupil very badly?’ I asked with feigned nonchalance, finally broaching the most important subject.
Therewere quiet footsteps in the corridor. I looked round and saw Fandorin. He was wearing a Hungarian housecoat with decorative cording; he had a net on his hair and felt slippers on his feet. A smooth creature, stepping gently through the half-light with a glitter in his eyes – a real tomcat.
‘The night d-doorman informed me that you had returned. But where is Endlung?’ he asked, without a greeting o
f any kind.
From the question about Endlung I assumed that Pavel Georgievich had told Fandorin about our expedition. Despite the intense dislike that this man provoked in me, I was impatient to talk to him.
‘You may go, Kornei Selifanovich,’ I said to my assistant, and the intelligent man left immediately. ‘The gentleman of the bedchamber is all right,’ I replied curtly, and in order to prevent any further disagreeable questions, I added: ‘Unfortunately, it was simply a waste of our time.’
‘Things are not going sowell here either,’ said Fandorin, taking a seat. ‘You d-disappeared yesterday evening, before Emilie had come back. She managed her assignment perfectly andwe determined the precise location of Lind’s secret hideaway. It turned out that he is hiding the child in the tomb of the Princess Bakhmetova, which stands close to the wall of the Novodevichy Convent. The princess took her own life because of an unhappy love a hundred years ago and they would not allow her to be buried inside the convent, so her disconsolate parents built a sort of mausoleum for her. The Bakhmetov line has since become extinct, so the tomb is dilapidated and the lock on the door is rusty. However, that is merely a facade. Mademoiselle tells me that every time she was led into the cold interior with her eyes blindfolded, she heard the sound of well-oiled hinges. We have not been able to obtain an accurate architectural plan of the chapel; all we know is that the tomb itself is located underground in the v-vault.’
Erast Petrovich began drawing on the table with his finger.
‘We made ready yesterday at dawn. This (he put down the breadbin) is the monastery. Here (he positioned the salt cellar beside it) we have the tomb. There is wasteland all around, and there is a pond here. (He splashed a little tea onto the oilcloth.) In short, there is noway to approach unnoticed. We have positioned men in disguise around the spot at a considerable distance but not made any attempt to go inside.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.