Heart of Iron (17 page)

“Yes,” I said. “And you… you are better?”

He nodded, still eyeing me cautiously. It seemed that with my disguise I had become a new person to him, and we had to get reacquainted. “I obtained everything we need last night,” he said. “Do you wish to see?”

Of course I did. He handed me a sheaf of papers from his satchel, and I leafed through copies of submarine diagrams and long letters detailing boring but apparently important diplomatic details. Much of it revolved around Nightingale’s instruction to her spies, and Herbert’s hopeful letters to Her Majesty back in England.

Some of the letters were private correspondence — these were tied together with an ice-blue satin ribbon that reminded me strongly of Dame Nightingale. Without even looking at the signature, I recognized the meticulous, precise handwriting as hers. Interspersed with her letters were offers written with loopy, generous, words running off the page — surely Mr. Herbert’s. As revolted as I felt about reading private correspondence, I peeked with one eye, and blushed. The letters were passionate — an emotion I could see in her, boiling and bubbling like a tar pit deep beneath the icy surface. They made me jealous, too — I wondered if I were capable of such love, not to mention detailing it so fearlessly on paper. Among the fiery confessions, the muffled cries of longing and desire, were references to the post of Secretary at War, to the Ottoman negotiations, and to war with Russia.

It felt almost obscene at times, the way she toyed with the fate of nations in letters interspersed with proclamations of passion, where longings of lovers forced to be apart lashed out at the entire countries, a forbidden love that raged against the world and promised to destroy it. The seas that separated them were to be conquered by the navies and submarine fleets, the impossible expanse of land was to be crossed in airships of stolen designs, to be marched across by armies in red and gold of Britain and Ottomans. Dame Nightingale was denied, and it was the world that would have to pay for it.

“We’ll have to send these to Eugenia.” I gathered a sheaf of letters and a few other papers that made it clear that Nightingale and quite a few frequent visitors to the Northern Star had been using their positions to gather information and to use it for military planning. “I’ll hire a reliable courier in Moscow.”

Jack nodded.

“My God,” I said, blushing even more, and handed the letters back to Jack. “They love each other so much. And yet they are so proper when they are together.”

“Mr. Herbert is married,” Jack said.

“I guessed as much.” I looked out of the window. “And yet, she would turn the world inside out to please him.”

“This is what love does,” Jack said. He leafed through the letters, absent-minded. “I wish I could have had a chance to drop them off with your aunt last night,” he said. “But… ”

I remembered his mad run, something from a nightmare, not a waking memory. Something my mind tried to forget it even saw. “Does she know? Dame Nightingale, I mean.”

He nodded. “They chased me.”

“So they know where you went?”

Jack yawned and stretched, smiling. “I don’t think so; I jumped over the roofs and doubled back a few times, so I am fairly certain I’ve lost whatever pursuit was sent my way. “

“We still have to be careful.”

“Yes.”

We spent the rest of the morning in private ruminations. Jack’s thoughts were of course a mystery to me, but my own contemplation ran toward the possibility of pursuit. They would figure out he had left the city, and they would look for him in Moscow sooner rather than later. Our only hope was to continue moving, not attracting notice. Keep running, I thought, in rhythm with the wheels; keep changing trains and cities. It occurred to me there was a seductive danger about such life, the temptation to keep moving and never look back, and to never arrive at the final destination.

Moscow greeted us with fresh snow and blazing golden cathedral domes. We had to cover our eyes to protect them from the brilliance from above and below.

A hired coach took us to Balchug Street in the Zamoskvorechye District by the river. Tsar’s Tavern dated back to the sixteenth century, but its old-fashioned name was now a misnomer. After recent renovations the establishment was a small hotel, with a portion of the first floor still occupied by a kitchen and a dining hall that served food and liquor.

We took rooms on the second floor. We did not plan to stay longer than was necessary, but we needed papers to travel abroad. Thankfully, my aunt’s letters were enough to hasten the process.

After lunching, we went to see the Minister of Oriental Affairs. The ministry was instituted in Moscow after Siberian exploration started — as the sad result of Prince Nicholas’ eagerness to exile his enemies as far north as possible. The landlocked and eastern location suited it and a few other agencies better than the imperial capital of St. Petersburg.

The ministry was not far from Balchug Street. We had only to cross the bridge over the Moscow River, already seized with black and green brittle casing of ice, pass the Kremlin, and enter a labyrinth of small twisting streets. Snow slushed underfoot, dirty and weeping, kneaded by a multitude of feet.

I kept looking at the street signs. Moscow’s warrens depressed and confused me, and it seemed that no two streets met at the right angle. I was used to the orderly grid of St. Petersburg, streets razor-straight, wide. We got turned around a few times, but finally found the three-storied building of white sandstone decorated with a carved dragon painted red. I assumed the dragon was intended to be symbolic of the Orient.

Inside we found a roomy foyer with a marble fountain that was not working, and a dusty waiting room adjacent to the main office. It appeared to have been converted from what might previously have been an apartment for a struggling merchant family. A guard in full uniform nodded to us.

“What can I do for you, poruchik…?”

“Menshov,” I said and presented the papers with a confident flourish. “Poruchik means lieutenant,” I explained to Jack’s puzzled look. “This is a friend of mine, Mr. Bartram from England. We are traveling to China, and need travel papers. This is a letter from my aunt.”

“Wait here,” the guard said. He took my papers and disappeared into the office. We sat on the narrow sofa in the waiting room.

“I do not understand Russian bureaucracy,” Jack whispered.

“No one does,” I whispered back. “Just go along with it.”

I was grateful to Eugenia for laying out the places for us to go to, and writing letters to present so we did not need to do or say much. It made me feel as if I wasn’t really on my own, alone in the strange city.

An hour or so passed. The dusty clock on the wall ticked loudly at first, but when three in the afternoon arrived, it rang out the hours while a counterweight traveled downwards until it touched the floor and the clock stopped. There was no longer any way for me to keep track of time. Jack had a pocket watch, but it seemed improper somehow to ask him to look at it — as if the empty waiting room would be offended by my rudeness.

Finally, the guard reappeared, carrying our papers. They had been properly stamped and signed, and the guard handed them to me. “The minister asks after your aunt’s health,” he said.

“She is well,” I assured him.

“He says he did not know the countess had a nephew.”

“A distant one, on her father’s side. Thrice removed.” I had that small story memorized and was ready to diagram a Menshov family tree if necessary, claiming to be one of the provincial Menshovs descended from my great-grandfather’s bastard brother.

The guard only nodded. “Good family. And the old countess takes care of her relatives.”

It was already dark when we left the building and walked back to the tavern — the sun set early here; it wasn’t even six and already the lampposts had grown hazy round halos of light, like ethereal giant dandelions. Shadows pooled by the walls of the townhouses and engulfed the river, an insatiable black mouth swallowing everything.

The tavern keeper, a man as stout as his bow-legged oak furniture, sent a kitchen boy to fetch us a courier, and Jack and I took our supper in our room while preparing the package for Eugenia. The room was furnished with two beds, a stand with a basin jug of cold water, and a couple of chamber pots. Modest but sufficient, and it allowed me an opportunity to practice washing my face while carefully avoiding my mustache.

Jack sat on his bed, his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling. The tray with his supper stood by his feet, and he didn’t pay it much attention. “Are you not uncomfortable sharing a room with me?” he said.

I shook my head, still marveling at the sensation of breeze on my bare neck. “It’s better than being alone in a strange place. If Nightingale and her underlings catch up with us, I’d much rather you be here than behind a wall.”

“Safety in numbers,” he agreed.

I finished wrapping the letters into a silk scarf I had purchased on our way to the tavern earlier that day, and wrapped the scarf in butcher’s paper. This way, a casual inspection would present the package to be a modest gift. I even enclosed a note saying, “Dear Auntie, I hope you like this scarf. All is well. Love, Sasha.”

We ate some cold bread soup, fortified with no small amount of sour cream, and started on the potatoes and fried fish.

“There has been a great deal lot of paper sent back and forth,” I said somewhat unintelligibly, since the food in my mouth interfered with the clarity of my enunciation.

“This is what politics is all about, I think,” Jack answered. “Paper. It’s a good thing you have a letter from Wong Jun — it should help us.”

I thought of how sad Wong Jun looked in his cell. “Yes, it should. But we also need to remember his advice: while we are in China, we will be judged by their laws.”

“Ignoring that is what brought on the Opium War,” Jack said, “although the Chinese call it the Unfair War — and it was. The English are… uninterested in behaving in any manner contrary to their own immediate benefit. It’s a national shortcoming.”

“Chiang Tse mentioned an official in Canton,” I said. “Lin, I think — Commissioner Lin. Lin Tse-Hsu. He wrote letters to your queen, and he said again and again it was wrong to smuggle opium, that profit was a poor excuse for spreading such misery. He thought that if only she knew about it, she would stop the trade on moral grounds. I thought it fascinating that someone expected others to forego self-interest for the sake of doing the right thing.”

Jack shifted uncomfortably on his bed, the plate on his bony knees tilting perilously before he steadied it. “I was not proud to be English when the war started. However, Lin and the rest of the Qing are not so innocent — just ask your Manchu friend.”

“I know about the Han people not liking the Manchu,” I said. “I know they conquered East Turkestan. But you studied philosophy, you know that this is a poor rhetorical maneuver: whatever the Chinese had done does not justify what the British did.”

Jack looked suitably chastised and continued picking at his supper in silence. I finished mine, addressed the package, and headed down the stairs to hand it to the courier.

The tavern was full for dinner, mostly with merchants and an occasional freedman. The owner and his contingent of waiters — all greasy young men in long aprons that once were white at some point in their tragic existence — hurried to and fro with dishes of borscht and heaping plates of pickled herring and boiled potatoes, sauerkraut and thick slices of bread.

“Hey, poruchik!” a loud voice came from behind me and I turned, feeling my stomach turn to ice, afraid to see the Nikolashki or Nightingale’s spies. Instead, there were three hussars sharing a table in the corner, and they all gestured at me happily.

I held up one hand indicating I had some urgent business but I would join them as soon as I could, and went to look for the courier. He — a tall thin man whose face expressed great doubt that there was anything in the world at all worthwhile — took my package.

“Request a response,” I said. “When will you return?”

“I take a train tonight,” he said. “Return tomorrow, early afternoon.” So he would be taking the same train we did; it seemed reassuring. “Any instructions in case you have to unexpectedly leave?”

I pressed a few silver coins in his palm. “Yes. Forward as fast as you can in care of the stationmaster at Nizhniy Novgorod.” The courier nodded and even managed a wan smile once he counted the coins. With that, he disappeared, leaving me with nothing else to do but talk to the hussars.

Judging by the color of their faces and the empty vodka bottle in front of them, they were sufficiently inebriated. While Eugenia enjoyed an occasional nightcap of brandy with lemon, I had never picked up the habit of distilled spirits. It occurred to me however that in my male guise I could attempt it with minimum of judgment.

“Which regiment?” the tallest and burliest of them greeted me. He also had the most impressive mustache, and I almost felt dejected over my sparse stubble. I was sure a youthful lieutenant would have felt that way.

“Semyonovskiy,” I told them. A well-rehearsed lie.

They all nodded, and the burly one offered me his hand. “Rotmistr Ivankov,” he said. “And these here dolts are Cornets Petrovsky and Volzhenko.”

I shook hands as firmly as I could, but doubted I inflicted any damage.

“Sit and have a drink with us,” the Rotmistr said.

I nodded my agreement. The rotmistr looked like one of those people it was easier to say “yes” to than explain why you didn’t want to have a drink with him.

The rotmistr ordered a round, and as we waited, the conversation took on a familiar form — we compared places of birth and length of service (I decided not to lie too much and pegged mine at six months, which provoked gales of laughter). The rotmistr in his thirties and the cornets in their twenties were clearly not old enough to had participated in the Patriotic War of 1812 —they had not even been born — and regretted it. Yes, they had traveled abroad — mostly to pacify whatever natives protested the construction of the railroads or somehow found themselves unhappy the empire’s influence had reached them. And wherever it was, there were these friendly, loud, drunk men on horseback, ready to burn houses and do unspeakable things. By the time four glasses filled with vodka arrived, I felt that I needed a drink.