The Ice King (17 page)

“Am I deluding myself in thinking that you're not angry with me?" he asked.

“I've no reason to be angry," she replied. "I was just afraid that you might think . . ." she hesitated, uncertain how to express herself.

“Think what?"

“That I was inviting you . . ." It didn't seem a very clear way of saying it, but he appeared to take her meaning.

“No, I know you better than that," he said. They finished the dance in companionable silence, and then he said, "The dining-room is almost finished. Would you care to see it?"

“Very much," Tanya replied. "But . . ." She glanced around, conscious that quite a few pairs of eyes were observing.

“Yes." Prince Nikolai glanced around and caught Vladimir's eye. He was standing by himself near the door, and he sauntered over to them, or came as near to a saunter as a man could after twenty-odd years of military drill. He exchanged a brief mutter with the Prince, and then gave Tanya his arm out of the ballroom, while the Prince strolled along behind.

They walked along the gallery and turned into the vestibule, and then Vladimir, apparently catching sight of himself in the mirror, remarked that Yuri had pinned his St. George on crooked, and he must put it straight at once. Tanya and Prince Nikolai left him fiddling with it and went on to the dining-room, entered, and Prince Nikolai closed the doors behind them.

“It occurs to me that I blacked Sergei Mikhailovich's eye for doing much the same as this the other night, and now I'm doing it myself, with Vladimir Sergeivich's connivance," Prince Nikolai remarked in a grim tone.

Tanya, her stomach fluttering with apprehension at finding herself alone with him again, and yet quite well aware that she had known that this was his intention in inviting her to see the room, clasped her hands tightly on her fan, made herself breathe steadily and as normally as possible, and looked round the room, turning slowly as she did so in order to see every part of it.

All the candles were alight, and their flames reflected in soft golden pools on a glowing satinwood table and a set of chairs with green silk padded seats, backs carved with the Volkhov arms and slender, straight legs inlaid with a narrow band of gilded brass. The walls were now pale green and hung with large mirrors in gilt rococo frames, interspersed with hanging pendants of white plaster flowers and fruits. There was a strong smell of fresh paint.

“What a difference!" she exclaimed. "I wouldn't have thought it possible in such a short time!"

“It's surprising how quickly things can happen," Prince Nikolai replied. "One goes on for years thinking that everything will be the same for ever, deadly, lifeless, hopeless, and then suddenly, within a few days, life seems full of hope and purpose. Unless, of course, one is mistaken, and then, presumably, it all reverts to its former state, only worse. Are you in love with Vladimir Sergeivich?”

He had been speaking in a quiet, conversational tone, as if he was talking about the weather, or the room, or something equally indifferent, and even the last question was in the same tone.

Tanya turned to look at him, her mind still grappling with what he had just said, confused by the incongruity of the words and the tone in which they were uttered. He looked no more than politely interested, as if the answer to the question hardly mattered to him, but, in that case, why had he asked it? The obvious answer seemed far too wonderful to be possible; but if he did mean that he cared for her, but doubted if his feelings were returned, some of his recent words and actions would make more sense.

“No," she replied breathlessly. "I like him very much, but just as a friend —
a
brother, almost. I rather think he's in love with Olga Mikhailovna."

“Good," said Prince Nikolai absently. "I'm sorry I have to go away tomorrow, but it's something important, an obligation to someone who depends on me. I can't put it off.”

She wondered whom he could mean. Hadn't Maria said he had no family, except the Kirovs?

“No, of course not. Novgorod, you said? Your home is near there, isn't it?"

“Yes. White Gates. My refuge and hiding place. I have other houses and estates, but that's the one I've always run to when things were too unpleasant. When I left Anna, and after Borodino . . . I stayed a long time then.
'Io no piangeva; si dentro impietrai' ."

“
Is that Italian?" Tanya asked, recognising the music of the words, but not their meaning.

“Yes. Dante. 'I did not weep, so much of stone had I become'." He sounded very bitter and sad.

Tanya's feelings for him swamped any idea of prudence or propriety. She went to him and put both her hands in his in a spontaneous gesture of love and understanding. He looked at her questioningly for a moment, then bent his head and gently kissed her lips.

“
Moya dushka!"
he said in Russian.

It was such a gentle, brotherly kiss, yet Tanya felt that same electric tingling flooding through her, and was so shaken by it that she stood still and silent, looking half-dazed. Prince Nikolai waited for a few moments, as if he expected her to say something, than apparently concluded that her gesture had only been made out of pity after all. He uttered a faint sigh, and then said, "I suppose we had better go back," and turned to open the door. Tanya accompanied him in something of a trance.

“Ah, that's better!" said Vladimir, giving his medal a final approving pat which knocked it crooked, and offering his arm to Tanya. He gave Prince Nikolai one of his fleeting winks as he walked her back to the ballroom. The Prince hung back for a few minutes, looking into the salon to see that everything was ready for supper, before returning to the ballroom quite clearly by himself, as several people noted.

“What colour is it?" Vladimir asked Tanya, but she stared at him uncomprehendingly. "The dining-room," he prompted.

“Oh. Green. And white. With satinwood.”

*

Marisha spent the whole evening in a delightful haze of enjoyment, and sat in a corner of the carriage all the way home with a happy smile and a dreamy expression on her face. Tanya sat in the opposite corner staring unseeingly out at the wintry streets. Half of her felt that she couldn't poss- ibly be mistaken about Prince Nikolai's feelings for her, and the other half was equally positive that she couldn't possibly be right. It was very confusing.

She tried to make a sensible analysis of the conversation with him in the dining-room. Perhaps he had asked her about Vladimir in order to warn her of the Colonel's captivation with Olga, if she appeared ignorant of it. That could fit. If he knew of her dull life at Yaroslavl, and the gloomy prospects before her at Taganrog, he might have been referring to the sudden change in her life, and trying to warn her not to build any hopes on her acquaintance with Vladimir. Perhaps he had also tried to warn her that there was someone in his own life at White Gates. Perhaps a mistress – someone Maria and the others knew nothing about.

Casting her mind back to her earlier visit to his house, she recalled his reference to destroying someone's life for his selfish pleasure, and once he had said something about bearing the responsibility for the results of his actions . . . Perhaps he had seduced someone and then felt obliged to marry her, but she was quite unsuitable to appear in society as his wife. The days when a noble could marry a serf and make everyone accept her, as Count Sheremetyev had done a century or so ago, were long past. Tanya could visualise him being tormented by guilt over something like that, but, at the same time, she couldn't imagine him as a seducer! ' She continued to stare out of the window and puzzle about it all the way home. Count Alexei had dozed off. Countess Maria was humming a little tune and thinking how splendidly everything was working out, and Fedor gave a lengthy account of a discussion he had been having about Orlov horses with a fellow who didn't really know a pastern from a fetlock. Neither did any of his companions, but they were not listening, so it hardly mattered.

The next week seemed extremely long to Tanya, and yet at the same time Lent seemed to be approaching extraordinarily quickly. Now that Marisha's cold was better, she and Tanya resumed their visits to various buildings in the city, and Olga often joined them, gradually losing her shyness as she became more used to going about and meeting people, particularly as it was obvious that she was generally considered to be a Beauty, a position which would give confidence to any, fortunate young lady.

Boris obligingly applied to the Court Chamberlain for tickets of admission to some of the buildings which belonged to the Emperor, and took them first to see Peter the Great's charming blue-and-white Kunstkamera on Vassilievsky Island. It was Petersburg's fi
st purpose-built museum, built by a consortium of architects to house Peter's own collection of oddities, souvenirs of his travels, stuffed birds and animals, and all kinds of tools and gadgetry. The young ladies found it fascinating.

On another day, he took them to the Tavrichevsky Palace, and entertained them by recounting some of the less shocking anecdotes he had heard from his father about its former owner, Grigor Potemkin, Catherine the Great's lover and general. Czar Paul had quartered the Chevalier Guard and their horses in it, for he had hated Potemkin, but Tanya was pleased to see that it was being carefully restored.

That evening, Vladimir asked her if she would like to see the Engineer's Castle, a very curious building near the Summer Garden. Of course she replied that she would, so he escorted her there with Marisha and Olga the next afternoon.

The Castle, built for Paul, had been given to the Corps of Engineers by the Emperor Alexander after his father died in it in 1801 (officially of apoplexy, but rumour very quietly whispered otherwise), only a few weeks after he had moved into the place in such haste that the plaster had not even had time to dry on the walls, and it was now used as a school for cadets who intended to enter the engineering branch of the Army. Consequently there was little to see inside, but the ladies found it quite interesting, if only because it was such a satisfyingly hideous confection. It was as if Bazhenov and Brenna, the architects, had been in fundamental disagreement with each other, and forced to use up bits left over from a couple of dozen other buildings in a variety of styles.

The decorations seemed to consist almost entirely of variations on Paul's Imperial cypher, which sprouted from every possible surface. Olga enquired how many there were, and Vladimir replied replied that someone had once counted up to eight thousand before giving up. They were crossing the courtyard at the time, and Olga smiled up at him in her chanting, shy fashion, and said inconsequently, "I do believe you're the only gentleman I know with a moustache!"

“Shave it off if you like," Vladimir offered. All three young ladies looked at him in consternation. Tanya thought such a sacrifice was on a par with laying his entire fortune at Olga's feet, or some such extravagant gesture, and she was quite relieved when Olga said, "Oh, pray don't do that! I like it!" and blushed prettily.

Boris was in attendance the next day, but he sent round tickets of admission to Peter the Great's little wooden house on the north side of the river, opposite the Summer Garden, and Vladimir volunteered to escort the ladies again. His carriage took them across the ice and drew up by the steps rising from the river to the embankment outside their destination, so that they climbed up to it as if they had arrived by boat.

The house was a small log cabin, built by Peter with his own hands when he first came to the site of his new city, and Catherine the Great had it enclosed inside a brick and stone building to preserve it. It still contained the furniture which Peter had made for it, and the big rowing-boat he built to go about the swampy, flooded city site in. He had gone out in it to rescue some drowning soldiers when he caught the chill which led to his death.

It seemed very easy to imagine Peter in this setting, and Tanya felt that she could understand him a little better after seeing the things he had made so well and with such obvious pleasure with his big, capable hands, and she could imagine him in her mind's eye, running a hand along the gunwale of the boat, as she was doing at that moment, feeling its smoothness and the tough resilience of the wood.

After they had seen everything in the house, they returned to the carriage and put on the skates which Fedor had unearthed from a cupboard in the schoolroom, and spent the remainder of the afternoon skating on the frozen river as the daylight faded and the lamps cast pools of light and patches of darkness over the ice. Tanya and Marisha stumbled about supporting one another and gradually gaining confidence as their balance improved, but Vladimir and Olga were both excellent skaters, and flashed to and fro and round about, executing complicated turns and figures of eight, Vladimir frequently finding it necessary to put an arm round Olga's waist.

On other afternoons there were visits to make, and the evenings were filled with balls and parties and receptions, and another visit to the theatre, and before long it was Monday again, and Tanya realised that she had only two weeks and two days left before Lent began and she must go.