Heart of Iron (13 page)

“Mr. Bartram,” I said as he escorted me across the bridge, back to Vasilyevsky Island, “I have a favor to ask of you.”

He looked down at me, quizzical. “What is it?”

“You have informed me of your… special capabilities,” I said. “You think that I would not be believed if I were to tell anyone. But it is still quite a risk, no matter whether I am believed or not. What if I were to tell Dame Nightingale?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“No, I would not.” I would not give the dreadful woman the time of day if it could be avoided. “But there are those who know of them. I have read about you.”

He smiled. “In the newspapers?”

“Indeed. It was very thoughtful of you to show me where they were.”

He laughed. “You seem to enjoy sneaking behind my back.”

I blushed a little. “I could not be sure if you wished me to discover more about you, so I had to finish my readings before I told you. And now you are laughing about it.”

He grew serious then. “Not at all,” he said. “Although you are right. I did want you to know about me. But to tell you straight out did not seem right.”

We stopped in the middle of the bridge. The wind was especially cutting there, and the black water churned below, occasionally silvering and growing choppy with the silent passing of submarines underneath its surface. I watched Jack observe their movement, and a quiet certainty grew within me. All this time I had agonized about ways of swaying him to my side, but he wanted nothing more. This is why he told me about the Crane Club. He could not help but tell me, yet he could not tell me all. Nor could he ask of me what he wished to ask.

“What is it that you want from me?” I asked.

He smiled, started saying something jocular, but then his eyes met mine and he stopped.

“You want me to free you,” I said. “Correct?” It was starting to feel like a parlor game, where a summoned spirit could answer only yes or no; all that was missing was a medium and table rapping.

He nodded, turning back to stare at the river. A submarine surfaced, and a freedman wrapped in an overcoat of sheepskin and shod in felt boots climbed out of the hatch awkwardly, and tinkered with something on the tail end of the contraption.

“These submersible craft are rather complicated,” Jack said. “Very interesting, really.”

“Of course you have plans of their inner workings,” I guessed. “You stole them, just as you stole the Chinese airship models.”

“And some other war machines,” he said. “When all of those documents travel to London, the British Empire will be impossible to oppose.”

“Especially if you have the Ottomans on your side,” I said. At that point it was a mere supposition, even though I had seen a Turk or two in the Northern Star, their red fezzes as visible in the crowd as blood on the snow.

“Yes,” Jack said. “I’m afraid there is nothing to be done about all that.”

“And you hate being a spy.”

“I was compelled. One cannot help but resent any sort of indentured servitude, be it slavery or something a little more genteel.”

“So if I were to offer you something else?”

“I would consider it,” he said. “Only what can you offer that Nightingale won’t take away?”

“Who is she, really?”

“The head of Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” Jack said. “She supervises all the spies.”

“So she has access to everything any of you bring along.”

Jack nodded. “Mr. Herbert, her… friend, is hoping to head the War Office, and she will do anything to help him get there. She calls herself his ‘helpmeet,’ if I recall correctly.”

“That is from your King James’s version of the Bible, I think.”

“Probably.” He sighed, still looking at the freedman and his bushy beard, at his thick clumsy fingers adjusting the membranous fins of the submarine’s tail and the lattice of bronze rods and gears that held them in place. “Everything she says is from somewhere.”

I pondered. It made sense that Nightingale would keep all the intelligence — copies or originals — gathered by her spies. Knowledge is power and she intended to gain such for her Mr. Herbert. “Do you know where she keeps her documents?”

He nodded. “A safe.”

Neither of us said it aloud, but Jack had experience with safes. The man who stole display cases from the Chinese students’ club could just as easily obtain all the secret materials from the British spymistress. The question remained what to do with them.

“She will not be leaving St. Petersburg before Christmas, will she?”

He stared at me. “I don’t think so. Why?”

I sighed, feeling petty and selfish. “I have exams to take. When I’m done, I think you should take those documents from her.”

“She’ll get them back. She has many men under her command, and your family can’t help you.”

“No.”

The freedman had finished his tinkering, leaving one of the fins hanging aslant, clearly broken. Cursing under his breath, he crawled through the hatch and the submarine sank from view, leaving only a small trail of silver bubbles in its wake, like a drowning man.

I continued along the bridge and Jack followed. “My family,” I said, thinking aloud more than addressing him, “may not protect me, but if anyone can make the emperor listen, it’s my aunt. It may take her a while, but she will find a way.”

“I hear she’s in disfavor.”

I shrugged. “She is, but in his heart the emperor knows she always speaks the truth. He may try and ignore her, but he won’t succeed. We must make sure she has proof the British… that you are spying and planning an alliance with the Ottomans. Can you obtain such proof? Something even a delusional man can not argue with?”

“A delusional man can argue with anything,” Jack answered, catching up to me with no effort and walking so close his arm brushed mine. “However, I can provide your aunt with enough that the emperor will have to admit he is delusional to ignore it.”

“That would do,” I said. “And I will help you avoid Nightingale.”

He made an amused face, but I could not miss the savage hope that flashed in his pale gray eyes. “And how would you do that?”

“You will come with me to China,” I said. The plan had just formed in my head — rather, all the sleepless nights and musings and political conversations with my aunt had crystallized into this solution, as perfect as it was simple, or idiotic, depending on one’s viewpoint. All I knew was that I liked it.

“China,” Jack repeated, not bothering to affect amusement any longer. “To do what, exactly?”

“To avoid Nightingale,” I said cheerfully. “We can find those men you freed that night, remember? I need to see Wong Jun first, to ask him where we can find them and who else would help us. My aunt will work on the emperor here, while we convince the Chinese that they need to ally with Russia against Britain. We can bring the documents, the diagrams of the airships. We will take submarine plans to them as well, as a bargaining chip.”

“Seems risky,” Jack said. “Although I do not suppose Russia would have much to fear from the Chinese — the British East India Company would surely be their main concern.”

“And submarines would help against China’s ships,” I concluded. “Really, it is disgraceful what Britain is doing with the opium trade.”

“I wish I could argue,” Jack said, “but you are correct — and you are correct about traveling to China.”

I couldn’t help but smile at his docile readiness to follow me across an entire continent the same way he followed me to my dormitories, protective and yet defenseless. I, of course, had to admit that fear of Dame Nightingale probably provided a stronger motivation than whatever attraction he felt toward my humble person, but enjoyed the realization nonetheless. Besides, I had read enough James Fenimore Cooper and Alexander Dumas in my youth in Trubetskoye to appreciate the challenges of our lonesome heroics. We were two noble friends standing against the cruelty and small-mindedness of the world, and we had no choice but to do what we believed in, circumstance be damned. I almost felt guilty about still worrying about my exams, and my secret hope that it will take us long enough to gain access to Wong Jun for me to finish the exams. One thing I did not worry about was my aunt’s compliance — I knew that she would have nothing but agreement with my proposition.

One day in mid-November Eugenia arrived at my apartment with an expression of triumph on her red, chapped face.

“Don’t ask me how I did it,” she said as she pulled off her gloves and gestured to Anastasia to get the kettle on, “But I got you an appointment with your Chinaman friend.”

I ignored the explicit prohibition — more of a dare or an invitation, really. “Who did you bribe?”

She took off her hat and bustled into the kitchen, rubbing her cracked, rough hands and pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “Never you worry about small indignities — you have an aunt for that.”

I had to smile, sure this is what she told my mother — my mother who was comfortable and content in the family home, with a tabby cat purring in her lap and her knitting in her hands. “Thank you, Aunt Genia. Where is he?”

“They stuck him in the Petropavlosk Fortress,” she replied. “On Zayachiy Island. Apparently, he’s important enough.”

“Of course he is,” I replied. “He is a Manchu.” It was silly to feel such a sense of pride, but I felt flattered that someone I knew warranted an imprisonment at the place that housed only the most notorious and highly regarded among political prisoners. Then again, the fact that no one had ever escaped from it filled me with gloom. I sighed.

“He’s in Alexeevsky Ravelin.” Eugenia shook her head, troubled. “So many good people have perished there — I only thank God there weren’t more. Every time I think of your father and his friends’ rebellion, my heart almost stops when I consider what could have happened. Can you imagine what would become of them if they had failed?”

“Ravelin,” I guessed. “How am I getting there?”

“I’ll hire you a coach — unless, of course, you would like me to come with you. Or do you have another escort?”

“I think I should go by myself,” I said. Anastasia had finished her preparations for tea, and Eugenia and I drank with great enjoyment, trying to chase away the bitter, wet cold that settled deep into our bones.

Eugenia drank in large gulps. By all rights the scalding hot tea should have peeled the epithelium right off her esophagus, but she had apparently trained it to withstand temperatures hot enough to melt lead. “Is that so? Still enjoying solitude?”

I blew on my tea and waited for it to cool down. “I think that a young woman alone tends to invoke the instinct of protectiveness in men — and I am assuming that I will be dealing with the guardsmen and the commandant of the fortress. I do not want them to wonder about my purpose, I just want them to be concerned and to want to help me.”

Eugenia gave a short incredulous laugh. “Oh dear niece. Not even three months you’re away from home, and already you’re plotting and calculating like a government official. This city has bureaucracy in the bones, and black ink for blood.”

“When is my appointment?” I asked.

“Tomorrow,” Eugenia replied. Before I could object, she held up her hand, commanding. “I know, I know, you haven’t missed a day of classes yet. I’ll send Anastasia to your professors so they know we had an urgent family affair only my heiress could deal with. And I’ll make sure those friends of yours come for tea after and tell you everything they learned. Which probably won’t be much, what with the way they’ve been filling their heads with dresses and men and nonsense, but enough to get you by. You’re so much smarter than any of them, I swear.”

I knew my aunt well enough to recognize this praise as disguised question — she wanted to know whether I was filling my head with nonsense. I suspected that dresses she wouldn’t have minded so much, but Jack must have been a concern to her. I still had not told her about her expected role in my designs, reasoning that the less time she had to contemplate my request, the less likely she would be to decline it. Despite her many eccentricities, Aunt Eugenia was not insane. Rather she possessed the courage and iron will to stand up to the emperor or anyone in his court. But she lacked the ability to ignore the facts and barrel through — her hope hitched to that least reliable of movers, expectation of luck and simple refusal to think through one’s actions and their unavoidable outcome — against all odds.

If I were to think everything through as thoroughly as Eugenia, I would not go to the Petropavlovsk Fortress, or made plans to travel to China. My ignorance and optimism sustain me when sober reason fails; I am not convinced that I like this conclusion, but I cannot deny it. Whatever the case, I had decided to conceal my intentions from Eugenia for as long as my conscience would allow me — and it was proving to be surprisingly robust.

Eugenia touched my hand. “What are you thinking about?”

I realized I hadn’t answered her question, so I laughed. “Rest assured, Aunt Genia, I am not interested in dresses or men. Or rather, I am interested in the man in Alexeevsky Ravelin, but my interest in him in strictly political.”

Eugenia smiled with visible relief.

I shrugged. “I have my education to worry about.”

Eugenia had never been stupid, and she sat up, looking at me closely with her piercing eyes. “And pray tell, why are you so interested in it all of a sudden?”

I could never lie to her about these things, and yet I had trouble articulating why I had undergone such a change of heart. She knew, of course, that I had first gone to the university out of obedience rather than enthusiasm. And now, as much as I would hate to disappoint her if I quit, the drive to stay and to excel was entirely mine. “I am not sure,” I said after some soul-searching. “I suppose this is one thing that is entirely mine.”

She raised an eyebrow at me, but finished her tea and stood. “The coach will be here tomorrow at eight in the morning. Be ready.”