Bold Sons of Erin (30 page)

THE DEPARTURE OF MY TRAIN WAS DELAYED BEYOND my tardy arrival. A solicitous railway fellow guided me to an empty car—a rarity in those days—and I sat myself down and opened my German grammar. For time must not be squandered. Besides, I was in flight from other thoughts. Of murders. And of home.

A fine, florid fellow, dressed up to the nines, stepped into the car and sat down. Now, the gentleman had his pick of seats, but chose the one that faced me, which seemed queer. But then he was foreign, as a fellow saw at once, and rich to a bloating. The grander the fortune the American possesses, the darker the hues of his clothing. But the European celebrates his wealth in silks and colors, with jewels for studs and yellow gloves and walking sticks of ivory. My fellow passenger was a man in his prime, with whiskers as neat as a cat’s tucked into his high collar, cheekbones that swelled out like upended cutlets, and oiled hair combed forward at the temples. I did not think him likely to be a Methodist.

Hardly a moment after he took his place, the train began to move.

I sought to reapply myself to the reasons why
Gefahren
and
Gefahr
were separate of meaning. But my fellow traveller stared at me until I looked up again.

When he had my attention, he cleared his throat, touched lightly at his cravat, and said, “Why, I find we are companions,
sir!” His accent spoke of Grosvenor Square, though he was no more English than a Parsee. His little mouth formed a smile that stretched the flesh over his cheekbones and made his whiskers bristle. He leaned toward me, as if beginning a confidence. “How splendidly fortuitous! That is, if I have not mistaken the company by which I find myself distinguished?” He removed his glove and extended a large, white hand with a daintiness one expected of a missy. “Edouard de Stoekl.”

“Major Abel Jones,” I told him, although he seemed to know. Twas then I noted a burly fellow blocking the doorway down at the end of the carriage. Doubtless, another such like stood to my rear.

“Ah! Then I was correct! How very fortunate for me! I’ve wanted terribly to make your acquaintance, you know. One hears such disturbing things . . . and I wished an opportunity to speak privately with you, to promote a view of events I believe you may find more comforting than that described to you by a certain baroness . . . who is, to the general benefit, confined at present.”

He was the minister fellow from Russia, Baron de Stoekl, and a greater combination of masculine chestiness and priss I never did meet before that day or after.

“Oh, but you needn’t be dismayed that I know where you were last evening,” he continued. “Really, Major Jones, I find myself
de
luged with such reports—I suffer applications from the most unlikely quarters! The enthusiasm with which the residents of Washington spy upon one another, then advertise what they have learned . . . why, I must say that your capital is a city that can
not
be entrusted with a secret.”

“Unlike the capital of Russia?” I said. I fear I spoke with a nasty undertone, for I was miffed to think I had no privacy. And I had been trapped neatly upon that train, which made me feel a fool.

The baron merely chuckled. “Ah, but I see you’ve had report of our St. Petersburg, Major. Indeed, the Russian has an inclination to secrecy born of his inclement history. We who
look westward for our inspiration have a great struggle ahead of us.” When he leaned toward me again, I smelled a perfume, which I will admit was pleasing. Although I do not favor scent on a gentleman. “We live in the most beautiful city in the world, you know. Our canals are more beautiful than those of Venezia, and our palaces are without peer—designed by Italian and German architects, of course.”

He glanced through the window, as if he might glimpse the capital of all the Russias beyond the glass. But all there was to see were trees thinned of their leaves and a guardpost flashing by, where bored soldiers watched the railway line and shivered.

The baron brought his eyes back to mine own. Hard little squinters, they were. “Dear Pieter . . . so lovely, so generous of proportion! It’s simply delicious to walk there, along the embankment, on one of those endless June nights . . . to let oneself slip into a reverie, or chatter with a friend! Yet, so many of His Majesty’s subjects fail to appreciate what we have, what they are given. They wallow in intrigues and mystical nonsense. It can lead to . . . unnecessary dangers.”

He put on his diplomat’s smile. “Perhaps you will visit us one day, Major Jones? How I should like to show you the beauties of our dear city! We Russians and Americans really are rather alike, you know. In so many ways. Huge countries. Enormous! With wealth yet untried. You have your frontiersmen, we our cossacks. We share concepts of magnitude no other civilized peoples would comprehend. Personally, I see our two countries as the pioneers of humanity—not merely husbandmen of crude wastes and deserts. Really, you
must
visit us. As my guest. When your fraternal struggle has been resolved.”

I did not think it likely I would visit him. Or his country.

The Russian minister clapped his hands. The sound was as loud as a shot. For an instant, the fellow seemed to have become an oriental potentate, merciless of expression and impatient.

“Andrey!”
he barked.
“Sichass! Bistra, bistra!”

A fellow shouted,
“Sluzhu!”
and rushed up behind my back, coming on with such alacrity I turned my head to ensure I was
not attacked. He wore a bottle-green uniform coat so fine I could not tell if he was an officer or a servant. With a folding table under one arm and a basket in his hand, he looked over his own shoulder, barking in turn at a smaller fellow, who wore a braided uniform of blue. The second lackey leapt forward with bottles and glasses.

Baron de Stoekl let them work, reserved again, still and prim and satisfied. The two fellows flipped up a table, spread out linens, laid china and silver, set glasses, and produced a meal of items every one of which looked odd, excepting the bread and butter.

The smaller fellow in blue filled tumblers from a bottle of water, but when he moved to pour me wine—ruby-red it was—I left him in no doubt that I wanted none of it.

When he saw I would take no wine myself, the baron waved the bottle away from his own glass. A moment later, we sat as intimates again. Except for the guards at the ends of the carriage.

“I trust you will forgive me my indulgence?” the baron said. “I always take a second breakfast, a habit from my own country. Our weather demands a certain fortification.” He smirked. Not at me, but at some stray thought. “Although the Russian soul, our
Russkaya Dusba,
rather prefers mortification, I think.”

He lifted his water tumbler.

“To President Lincoln!” he declared. “To the undivided Union!”

I brought the full glass to my lips and, just before I drank, a wicked odor saved me. It was not water at all, but some sort of spirit.

The baron was well along in his swigging—indeed, his glass was half drained—when one of his eyes alerted to my reluctance.

He lowered his glass. “But you do not drink, Major Jones! Not even to your president? Am I
so
unwelcome to you?”

“I have taken the Pledge, sir, and do not partake of alcohol.”

The look of astonishment on his face reminded me of the time in the maharanee’s palace when Molloy and I come face to face with an elephant in a bedchamber.

“Pledge?” he asked, befuddled for the first time in our interview.

“The Temperance Pledge, sir. I will not despoil the flesh the Good Lord has granted me by partaking of liquors or spirits.”

He stared at me.
“Nye mozhet bit . . . eto nye vozmozhno
. . .” he shook his head. So shocked he was that next he fell into German, exclaiming,
“Gott im Himmel, dass ist was neues unter der Sonne . . .”

“Good it is for the health of body and soul,” I explained, “and I do not doubt that Temperance will triumph in our lifetimes.”

The fellow drained the rest of his glass, in search of his lost composure. Setting the tumber down again, he barked,
“Andrey! Vodku prinosi! Botilku prinosi!”

His demand was answered by a great scurrying and pouring, after which the bottle which I had mistaken as a container of water remained near the baron’s hand. The lackey disappeared again, trailing worry and woe.

The baron dabbed a bead of moisture from his mustache and said, “But it seems I know still less of your American customs than I had believed! ‘Temperance,’ you say? I shouldn’t think it would be a success in Russia.” He took a draught from his brimming glass and closed his eyes while he swallowed. “Of course, my own family is German, you understand. We are not creatures of excess like the Slavs. Still, a man requires a certain warmth . . . a certain invigoration . . .” A sudden thought brightened his aspect. “And now you see that I haven’t been spying on you at all! Surely, I would have known such a thing as this matter of Temperance, my dear major.”

“Then who
was
spying on me?” I asked. I tried to look him in the eye, but fear my gaze strayed to the foodstuffs, which looked tempting. The substance of Mrs. Schutzengel’s breakfast had begun to wear away.

“A minor figure, a craven soul,” he assured me. “It hardly matters.” He followed my eyes. “But, surely, you won’t reduce
me to the embarrassment of dining alone, Major Jones?
Do
try a dumpling . . .”

It is not polite to refuse an offer of hospitality, see. I ate along to keep the fellow company. And the truth is I was as curious as I was hungry now, for I recalled the multitudinous flavors of India, of which I once was fond. The natives et far better than we soldiers did and kept their bowels in better fit and order. Except when the cholera come round, of course.

And there had been a person in Lahore who cooked up lovely morsels for my pleasure.

“You must try
this,”
the baron said, gesturing toward a mound of whatnot. Twas odd. He spoke with his mouth half full of cucumber slices, which is not proper doing in society. Yet, otherwise his manners were all prettiness. “It’s done just so. Take up one of those little pancakes—still a bit warm, one hopes—spread a dab of cream over it, then spoon this on top. No, no! You must be generous with yourself. More, more,
more!”

The foodstuff he pushed toward me was a pile of glistening beads, gray with a hint of amber. I followed his example and rolled up the pancake, then took a curious bite.

Now, I will tell you a thing: The Good Lord put many an edible gift upon this blessed earth, and I speak as a man who has experienced the very best Welsh kitchens, as well as the savory blandishments of India. But I never put anything into my mouth that tasted quite like that. I cannot describe it to you. Nutty it was, and salty, and buttery, and silvery, and all bursting on the tongue until it seemed to explode into my brain. I never have known so small a thing to carry so great a flavor as those beads. I liked the dish better than a beefsteak, which is saying something.

He read the query on my face and answered it.
“Ikra.
The eggs of the sturgeon. Something of a peasant food, but we do enjoy it with our vodka. It’s becoming quite the indulgence in Paris, I’m told. And Lord Cardigan is reputed to have acquired a taste for it before Sebastopol.” He smiled. “But you
do
enjoy it, I see. I shall have to send you a few pounds.”

I fear I ate more than the baron himself. And I began to wonder whether Russia might not be worth a visit one time or another.

He drained his tumbler—for the third time, I think—and called for another bottle of the spirit. Again, the lackey ran to and fro, as if his life would be forfeit if he walked.

The baron touched his napkin to his lips, laid it beside his glass, shifted his contented bulk with a grunt, and said, “Please, please.
Do
continue eating. I’m terribly sorry I didn’t have Andrey bring along more of that . . . but see here. I’m afraid I shall have to step down at Baltimore, so I beg you, Major Jones: Allow me to put my case.”

I swallowed the last of the fish eggs and cream, which nearly broke my heart. I cannot tell you how lovely fish eggs taste.

I wondered if the eggs of a trout might do as well.

The baron leaned across the wreckage of our repast. “On my honor as a gentleman, I swear I shall tell you the truth, Major Jones. First, we did not kill your General Stone.” He wrinkled his mouth in distaste and I noticed that his lips were pink to a rawness inside. “I will leave his name thus. Stone. It’s less offensive to my ear that way. We did not kill him, although I might not have been able to make that claim, had some other hand not intervened. We did not know Stone had these anonymous enemies—though revolutionaries often do.”

He lifted one shoulder then the other, as if to make his coat sit more easily. “You may have encountered a fellow in this Pottsville of yours. A certain Count Stavrogin. A distasteful man, who works for a distasteful arm of our government. I have no authority over his actions. He was sent to this country to apprehend Stone and return him to Russia, but I think Stavrogin would have killed the man, had the opportunity presented itself. He was utterly possessed by his pursuit of Stone. His search had crossed the world. It lasted over a decade.”