The Jewel of St Petersburg (59 page)

O
NE HOUR LATER THE FIRST RIFLE SHOT SLAPPED INTO the back of the cart and made Katya jump with shock. Valentina spun around and spotted Mazhik on the road behind.
Chyort!
He had found something to cut the ropes. By the time the second bullet snicked at the stones at her feet, she was pushing Katya’s head down below the level of the cart’s sides and the man had released his grip on the leading rein. He was dragging a gigantic ancient shotgun from the pack on the horse’s back.

The roar it made as he pulled the trigger nearly ripped her ears apart. It startled the horse, which skittered sideways, ears flattened, but the shot stopped Mazhik in his tracks. He fired off one more wild shot, then shied away and retreated along the road, but that final crack of a bullet was too much for the horse. Its nerves leapt out of control, and with a loud whinny of panic the animal bolted down the track. The woman was a strong horsewoman and held on firmly, but the flimsy cart at the back was not built for such speed. Valentina screamed. She raced after the horse and her legs felt slow, too heavy, as though moving through mud, fighting for speed that wasn’t there. She fixed her eyes on her sister’s pale face. Katya’s mouth opened but Valentina heard nothing, just the high-pitched eerie cry spilling out of her own mouth.

A wheel snapped off and the cart slammed one corner on the ground. Nails split, splinters of wood spiraling up into the air as the horse veered off to one side. The rope snapped. In Valentina’s head everything slowed. She saw the moment piece by piece, as if it had shattered. The wheel whirling back toward her, the cart leaping like an unwieldy dolphin in a wide arc into the murky channel beside the road. The splash of water rising in a rainbow of colors, the awful sucking sound as mud and water seized their prize, and Katya’s body sank under the surface.

“Katya!”

Valentina leapt into the channel. The water came only to her waist and she plunged her hands under the upturned edge of the cart, twisting it over. Immediately Katya’s head bobbed above the water and though her face was covered in black slime like witch’s weeds, she spat the filth from her mouth and cursed Mazhik when Valentina grasped her tightly in her arms.

“Enough adventure for you?” Valentina hissed.

Katya gave her a crooked smile. “I always liked swimming.”

“Next time get out of the cart first.”

“Next time I’ll ...” But she started to shake.

“Bistro!”
Valentina shouted to the man to help her. His wife had the horse under control and was holding out a blanket for Katya.
“Spasibo,”
Valentina said gratefully.

The people of Russia were kind; Valentina felt it keenly. Something soiled and selfish corrupted their souls when they lived too long in Petersburg, but out here in the wide open spaces of this country the heart of Russia still beat strongly. It gave her hope.

In the distance ahead of them a lone horseman was galloping hard toward them, his cape flying out behind him. The bearded man murmured a word of warning and reached once more for his gun, but Valentina seized his arm.

“No!”

Even at this distance she knew who it was. Jens.

Thirty-six

V
ALENTINA WALKED BEHIND JENS AS HE CARRIED KATYA into the house and up the stairs. Dimly she was aware of her mother crying, of Nurse Sonya fretting, of servants rushing to open doors. Words rebounded off the walls and off her skin. Sounds entered her ears but didn’t reach her brain. All she saw was the long line of his back. His cape was wrapped around Katya, so that his jacket was what she saw and the way the blades of his shoulders shifted under the material. She noticed how his white collar nudged at his hairline, the width of his strong neck, the length of his limbs, the loose-jointed way of moving as he strode up the stairs.

She needed to draw all these things inside her again. As if she had lost them. Her eyes devoured them all. As soon as Katya was in her bed with people crowding around it, Valentina led Jens downstairs to the music room. He closed the door and took her in his arms. Held her fast against him. Neither spoke.

She rubbed her cheek against his cheek, her hair against his throat, even her legs twined around his legs like a cat, imprinting her scent on him and taking his scent on her. They stood together in the room, her body slowly molding to the shape of his bones once more, ousting the dents and hollows where someone else’s weight had left its mark on her. When he kissed her mouth hard and she tasted him once more, she started to feel clean.

S
HE WATCHED FROM ABOVE AS DR. BELOI SHOOK HANDS with her father in the marble-floored hall below, took his top hat, and left. He must have made a joke of some sort because they both chuckled. A good sign. She hurried down the stairs.

“What did he say, Papa?”

Her father looked older. These few days seemed to have sucked the last strands of his youth from him, so that his shoulders slumped, but there was something softer in the lines around his mouth when he spoke to her.

“Katya’s going to be all right. Dr. Beloi has given her something to make her sleep. A few days’ bed rest and extra medication should bring her back to her usual self, that’s what he says.”

He smiled, surprising her. She smiled back. A tentative connection once more.

“I’m so relieved,” she said, and started up the stairs again, but she stopped halfway and turned. “Papa, thank you.”

“For what?”

“For trying to raise the money for our release. It must have been ...” She sought for a word.
Humiliating? Degrading? Belittling?
In the end she just said, “It must have been difficult.”

He nodded but brusquely, unwilling to discuss it. He looked up at her and fingered his side whiskers in a self-conscious gesture. “And you? I hope you are all right after your ordeal?”

“Yes, Papa. I’m all right.”

“Nothing bad happened, except for Katya falling out of the cart?”

“No, nothing bad happened.”

“Good. You did well to find her.”

He walked back into his study and shut the door. It made no difference to her that he was the one who had sent Katya into his study at Tesovo, though he’d never voiced it. She knew that if she had taken Katya with her for that dawn ride to the forest, her sister would not have been at her father’s beck and call. They’d have eaten breakfast and rushed straight down to the creek to swim. He may be as guilty as she was, but it altered nothing.

T
HE FEVER STARTED THAT NIGHT, THE SICKNESS BY THE next evening. Katya’s skin burned at first with a fierce dry heat that gave her cheeks a flush and made her eyes bright. But when the vomiting began, her eyes dulled to the color of the Neva Bay, and the hand that held a handkerchief to her mouth shook.

It was cholera. Dr. Beloi announced it and ordered Elizaveta Ivanova to take precautions. The house was quarantined, closed to all visitors, and Katya was moved to a room away from the family bedrooms. The servants were ordered to avoid that end of the house. Everything was scrubbed again and again, as Nurse Sonya ordered her assault on the illness with all the vigor of a military campaign. It was the stagnant water in the marshland channels, the doctor said, the infection lying in wait in the foul water like a spider in its web. She had swallowed it. And now it was swallowing her.

W
EAR THIS MASK, VALENTINA.” “Will it help?”

Jens cupped his hand over her nose and mouth as though he could guard them. “It’s a surgical mask. Dr. Fedorin gave it. It is essential that you don’t breathe her air.”

She nodded, her eyes huge above his fingers, and he wanted to pluck her out of that house of sickness. They were by the stables, the sound of hooves on cobbles echoing around them.

“You promise me? You will wear it always?”

She nodded.

“Don’t kiss her,” he said.

Her eyes flinched, but she nodded and he released his hold over her face. She touched a finger to his cheek.

“I will protect our child,” she promised.

“Protect yourself.”

He leaned forward to kiss her, but she turned her head away. “Don’t kiss me. Don’t risk yourself.”

He pulled her to him and pressed his lips to hers.

V
ALENTINA WAITED OUTSIDE ST. ISABELLA’S HOSPITAL, impatient as she watched the nurses descend the wide steps at a leisurely pace at the end of their day shift. There was a smell in the air of something burning, but she took no notice. It happened regularly now. A shop burned down, a warehouse torched, to teach bosses not to shut down unions or enforce punishing work methods.

“Darya!” she called at the sight of the figure with the spiky black hair.

“Valentina! What are you doing here? Can’t keep away even though—”

“Darya, listen. You know the empress’s monk who sometimes comes to the hospital wards.”

“Grigori Rasputin?”

“Yes. How do I contact him?”

Darya rolled her eyes and laughed.
“Durochka!
You idiot! Stay away from that mad—”

“How? How do I find him?”

“They say he has an apartment on Gorokhovaya near the Fontanka River and that the highest ranks of society flock to him there, when he’s not twisting his filthy mind around the Empress’s ...” But she didn’t finish. Valentina had gone.