The Jewel of St Petersburg (44 page)

As though she were a possession, to be polished and paraded for others to view before being locked away safely at night. When Stepan led her over to his parents, she held on tight to his arm as she bobbed a shallow curtsy, feeling the backs of her eyes rolling around in her head as she did so. But she recalled little else about the encounter. On the stroke of nine o’clock in the evening Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra, emperor and empress of all the Russias, were announced by the grand marshal of the imperial court, Baron Vladimir de Freedericksz. He startled Valentina out of her skin when he banged a ten-foot ebony staff on the polished floor three times and cried out, “Their Imperial Majesties.”

Captain Chernov smiled at her and stroked her hand on his arm. She thanked all that was holy that she was wearing long white evening gloves.

The imperial party paraded slowly past, glittering in all its cascade of jewels and medals. A hundred or more in the procession, grand dukes and grand duchesses strutting past as if they owned the world. They certainly owned Russia. These people gripped it so tight in their Romanov fists that she couldn’t see how any pack of ramshackle factory workers could possibly ever wrest it from them. Despite herself she was impressed. Russia was safe. No marauding revolutionaries had a hope of seizing control of the reins of government.

“You don’t need jewels like that,” Chernov whispered in her ear. “You are more beautiful than any diamond.”

She released his arm. “What do you know,” she asked, “about what I need?”

T
HEY HAD BEEN DANCING FOR HOURS, BUT VALENTINA would rather dance than sit down. The warmth of the vodka began to ebb. Like the tide going out, leaving razor-sharp rocks behind.

How could her father have done this? She wanted to rip off the dress she was wearing, cream silk studded with hundreds of pearls. Thousands of roubles, that was what it had cost. What about all the others in her dressing room? In her mother’s dressing room? All on borrowed money. And there was that word that terrified her, that made her feet falter and her heart stop.
Embezzlement.
Her father was a minister of finance to the tsar, with his hands in the Romanov coffers.

“Why so serious?” Chernov asked with a squeeze of her hand.They were dancing a waltz, and his arm around her held her possessively.

“I was looking,” she said, “at the different military uniforms here tonight. What a warlike nation we are.”

He smiled at her indulgently. “My dear Valentina, you have to understand that Russia is a country that has always been held together throughout its history not by its laws, not by its civilization, but by its army.”

“I thought we’d outgrown all that. What about our commerce and agriculture?”

He laughed, dismissing her opinion as if it were tinsel. “No. Russia is, and always will be, a military state.”

He danced well, gliding across the room with easy control. But she hadn’t finished. “I heard that some apprentices were attacked the other day in the railway sidings.”

“Not attacked exactly, just taught a lesson.”

“What were they doing wrong?”

“Valentina.” He spoke her name sharply. “Not now.”

“Stepan, were you with the Hussars who attacked the apprentices?”

Stiffly he brought his gaze back to her. “Yes, I was there.” He paused, examining her face. “Do you have any comment to make on that?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I have no comment.”

A
T MIDNIGHT A BUFFET SUPPER WAS SERVED. VALENTINA ate almost nothing. Round tables had been laid out in the Concert Hall with gold cutlery and white damask cloths embroidered with the Romanov eagle. One chair was kept vacant at every table for Tsar Nicholas as he circulated among his guests. Halfway through the meal, the sight of all the
zakuski
and pheasant became too much for her, so she excused herself from the table and walked into one of the anterooms where a female figure in a pale gown stood at one of the tall windows staring out into the night. Valentina approached and stood directly behind her.

“Good evening, Countess Serova.”

The countess spun around, and Valentina saw the brandy glass in her hand. “The piano player again, I do believe. What are you doing out here?” she asked.

“I was hot.”

The countess took a sip of her drink, and a small smile of anticipation softened her lips. “Are you thirsty, too?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me.”

Valentina followed the elegant figure to a long table in the next room. At its center rose a leaping dolphin sculpted in ice, but Valentina gave it little more than a glance. An array of drinks in crystal glasses was arranged around it: cordials, lemonade, and fruit juices to the right, wine and spirits to the left.

“A glass of wine?” the countess suggested. “Or maybe something stronger?”

“Peach juice, I think.” Valentina picked up one of the tall glasses and raised it to her lips. “So refreshing.”

The blue eyes of Countess Serova clouded with annoyance. She nipped the edge of her lower lip with her teeth and walked away, clearly tired of the game. But Valentina remained. It was cooler here. She lifted a sliver of ice and held it to her temple while she sipped her drink. When the fruit juice was half gone she selected another glass from the platter of ice, a different one this time, and tipped it into the remains of her peach juice.

Y
OU’VE BEEN GONE A LONG TIME.” STEPAN CHERNOV frowned, his blond eyebrows lifting as Valentina took her seat. “Are you unwell?”

“No, not at all.” She smiled at him. “I met Countess Serova, and we were arguing about which of you military men have the most attractive uniforms.”

“I hope you said the Hussar Guards.”

“Of course.” She trailed her hand down her throat just to watch his gaze follow its path. “As if I notice anyone else’s.”

He laughed and launched into a story about a bet on a cockfight, but Valentina lost track of what the point of it was.

“I’ll just fetch myself another drink,” she announced.

“Let me ask one of the servants to fetch it.”

“Thank you, but no. I feel like a little exercise.”

“Be quick.” He gestured to where Tsar Nicholas was seated at a nearby table. “We have the honor of His Imperial Majesty’s company next.”

As she hurried through the huge gilded doors, a thought struck her. He liked telling her what to do.

Twenty-seven

J
ENS WAS SMOKING ONE OF TSAR NICHOLAS’S MONOGRAMMED cigarettes. He tried to imagine what it must be like to have your initials stamped or gilded or embroidered on everything around you. It meant you could never forget who you were. He had come to the imperial ball only to please Minister Davidov. Jens was not in the mood for gaiety. But he had talked to the men Davidov had gathered together in one of the more discreet anterooms, talked business till the air was blue with smoke and had shaken hands at the end of it. Even so, he didn’t trust them. In Petersburg you didn’t trust anyone.

Not even a pair of dark laughing eyes. He grimaced and stubbed out the cigarette.

“What’s the matter with you this evening?” Davidov asked. “You look ready to bite.”

“I’m here. I’ve talked with your damn money men. Don’t expect me to smile at you as well.”

Minister Davidov chuckled to himself and swirled his brandy around in its glass. His hawkish face looked pleased, which was rare.

“It’s got to be a woman,” the minister declared.

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ve seen you at work, Friis, and I’ve seen you risking your life in one of your blasted tunnels. I’ve seen you bad tempered and bloody minded. But I’ve never seen you like this. Look at yourself.”

Both men were wearing black frock coats with gold lapels, but Jens’s was crumpled and he was slumped in the brocade chair, his limbs awry.

“I’m here to do business,” Jens growled. “Nothing more.”

He lit himself another cigarette, but as he did so he saw a woman enter the room. At an imperial ball the ladies were obliged to wear white or cream, so at a brief glance she was just one among many in an elegantly designed pale gown. But the way she walked alerted him, a haughty carriage that approached with an eagerness he did not welcome.

“Countess Serova.” He rose to his feet and bowed over her extended hand.

“Jens, what are you doing burying yourself away in here? Don’t you know that your little pet pianist is performing for His Imperial Majesty?” Her smile was as hard as a cat’s claw. “You should hurry. She has drawn quite a crowd.”

H
E COULDN’T HELP HER. IT WAS LIKE WATCHING A KITTEN drown. The hands struggling. The mouth gasping for air. The waves of relentless scorn washing over her, the derision dragging her down. When he first walked in he thought Valentina was teasing her audience, joking with them by hitting wrong notes. But it was no joke. She was perched on the edge of the stool at a grand piano, and the sight of her wrenched the heart from Jens.

The performance was a disaster. Valentina could have burst into tears and rushed from the room, but she didn’t. She sat there, teeth gritted. She kept playing. Her head and her hands seemed to have severed contact. She was playing Beethoven’s
Ode to Joy
and nothing could have been more inappropriate: There was no joy to be found in this room. To one side on elaborate gold chairs the tsar and tsarina sat stiffly, surrounded by more than a hundred of St. Petersburg’s elite who had gathered in this smaller hall where the Balalaika Orchestra had been playing earlier. Whispers slithered around the room.

Valentina, my love, if I could give you my fingers, I would.

Tsar Nicholas tugged with annoyance at his neat little beard, and his frown grew petulant. Finally, without a word he rose, offered his wife his arm, and walked out of the room. A trickle of guests followed, and Jens noticed that the countess was one of the first.

Damn you all for your rudeness, she’s still playing, still trying.

At the front of the audience stood Captain Chernov, and his face was a mask of scarlet, as vivid as the uniform on his back. Jens felt a sick twist of his gut. What Valentina’s father said must be true; the marriage must be arranged because already the captain was seeing her as an extension of himself, regarded her humiliation as his own. Jens loathed him for it. Not for the arrogant assumption that her behavior reflected on him, but for the fact that the man felt humiliated. Not sorry for Valentina. Not sympathetic for her plight. Not willing to cut off his right hand to get her out of the drowning pit she was in. Just humiliated. Ashamed of her.