‘If he comes, we’ll all fight, won’t we?’ he had anxiously asked. He would stand, side by side with his father, and protect his mother and sister to the end. Which had just caused Alexander Bobrov to laugh, and ruffle the boy’s hair. ‘I dare say we should, Seriozha,’ he had replied affectionately.
The last few days had been quiet, though. No troops came by. Russka was as silent as usual.
Sergei was a passionate little fellow. He not only loved his family, he was in love with them. His mother at forty-two had matured into a classic, rather Germanic beauty. She was unlike any other woman the boy had seen and, for some reason too wonderful to understand, she seemed to treat him with a special softness that gave him a secret pride. Then there was stern Alexis, away at the wars. He was tall and dark like their father. Sometimes Sergei was a little afraid of Alexis, who could be rather cold and aloof. But hadn’t he the right to be? He was an officer. A hero.
Here at home was Ilya. Some people laughed at his fair-haired brother because he did nothing and was so fat. But Sergei didn’t. ‘He’s read so much,’ he would say in wonderment. ‘He knows absolutely everything.’
And then there was his father. It had always seemed to Sergei that Alexander Bobrov was everything a nobleman should be. He would look splendid, like Alexis, in uniform. Yet he was cultivated like Ilya. He could be stern; yet, with that ineffable little Bobrov gesture of the hand, he could seem wonderfully gentle. He had suffered in prison for his beliefs. And, above all, he had that most desirable of all qualities in the eyes of the schoolboy: he was a man of the world. How lucky he was to have such a father.
These were his heroes. There remained his childhood play-mate, the little girl with the long, dark brown hair and sparkling eyes: little Olga. He called her little because she was a year younger and he felt protective towards her. Yet at times she was like an extension of himself. Each always knew what the other was thinking.
How lucky, how supremely blessed by God he was, to be one of such a family.
Sergei and Olga sat each side of Arina. As usual, she had been telling them a story. How comforting her dear, shiny, round face was! She was going grey, she had lost a front tooth that summer, yet she was always the same. ‘Pretty I never was,’ she would admit cheerfully. How old was she? The two children often tried to guess, or to trick her into telling them. But all she would ever say was, ‘I’m as old as my tongue, my dear, and a little older than my teeth.’ Perhaps she didn’t even know herself.
And she was just about to start a new tale when, suddenly, they heard a commotion downstairs and then his mother’s voice was crying out: ‘Alexis!’
How handsome he looked. How utterly splendid in his fur-lined coat. In the grey light of the hall, with his dark, brooding features and deep-set blue eyes – like some warrior from another age, a bogatyr from the days of ancient Rus. Sergei was beside himself with excitement to see his hero.
Alexis even smiled at him. ‘Here,’ he called out, and to Sergei’s surprise produced a musket ball. ‘This is a French bullet. Just missed me and hit my supply wagon.’ Sergei took it with delight.
‘Did you see Napoleon?’ he cried.
‘Yes.’ Alexis grinned. ‘He’s nearly as fat as Ilya.’
Soon, round the dining-room table, he gave them all the news. After the Battle of Borodino, he proudly told them, old General Kutuzov had actually complimented him in person. Since Moscow fell, he had been specially picked to carry out sorties against the French. And now he came to the most exciting news of all.
‘Napoleon’s leaving Moscow. The French are going home.’ Alexis nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s too late, though. Napoleon’s supplies are already low and he must think he can make a dash for the border before the snow comes.’ He smiled at Sergei. ‘If so, Seriozha, he’s forgotten one thing.’ He paused. ‘Our Russian mud. He’ll get bogged down. Our Cossacks will destroy every sortie he sends to find food. Then winter will get him long before he even reaches Smolensk.’
‘And will we engage again?’ Tatiana asked anxiously.
‘Yes. Probably. But if there’s another big battle like Borodino, we’ll crush him this time.’
Soon Alexis had to hurry on. He could not even stay the night. The family watched as he and his father embraced and Alexander Bobrov gave his brave son his blessing. Then he was gone, and as always happens when a soldier departs, each of them wondered if they would see him again.
It was at dusk that young Sergei came upon his father, standing alone on the verandah, gazing out at the last glow of the sunset. Alexander did not see him. There were tears in his eyes, and he was muttering to himself: ‘A true Bobrov. A true Bobrov.’
And for the first time it occurred to Sergei that perhaps his father might love Alexis more than him; and he wondered what he could do to be worthy of this greater love.
Three weeks had passed; the first snows had fallen, and the shattered Grand Army of Napoleon was already reduced to a dark, straggling mass, leaving corpses along its route as a snail leaves a trail, when the Bobrovs were surprised to receive a very different sort of visit.
It was young Savva Suvorin.
Alexander Bobrov had decided that he really did not like the Suvorins. Perhaps he felt a little guilty for the way he had treated them over the substitute recruit. But there was something dark and calculating behind their reserve that made him feel uneasy. An instinct told him that they neither feared nor respected him. He was not inclined to help them, even though his wife would laugh and remind him: ‘They’re the best source of income you’ve got.’
Now he stood before Bobrov, this solemn twenty-year-old serf, with a strange gravity already in his walk, calmly making a most extraordinary request.
‘I wish, lord, to ask for a passport. To visit Moscow.’
As a serf, Savva could not travel anywhere without a passport from his owner. He even needed one to go to the regional city of Vladimir. It did not seem a matter of great significance, but Bobrov looked at him with suspicion.
‘What the devil for? The whole city has just burned down!’
Savva permitted himself a half-smile.
‘Exactly, lord. So if there’s one thing the people there will need, it is warm clothes. We should get a good price for our cloth just now.’
Bobrov snorted with disgust.
How typical. Here they were, in the middle of the great patriotic war, and all this fellow could think about was profit.
‘That’s profiteering.’
‘Just business, lord,’ the serf replied calmly.
‘Well, I won’t have it,’ Alexander snapped, and then, casting about for another reason: ‘It’s unpatriotic.’ With which he waved the serf away.
And why, he always wondered afterwards, had Tatiana decided that evening to interfere on this trivial matter? Perhaps it was some instinct, or just that she felt sorry for Savva. But as soon as he told her about it, she had begun to plead: ‘I beg you to reconsider.’ Until at last he had given way and signed a passport. It did not seem very important.
1817
The plan that young Sergei Bobrov had hit upon was daring – but with careful timing it should work. Two friends would answer for his whereabouts, a third would answer his name at roll call. By bribing one of the school servants he had secured horses for each stage of the journey out and back.
The school at the Tsar’s summer residence of Tsarskoe Selo, near St Petersburg, was both strict and elite. It adjoined the great blue and white Catherine Palace, and not only had the Tsar given its pupils the use of his own library, but the imperial family would come to watch the chapel services from a private gallery above. Alexander Bobrov had had to pull some strings to get young Sergei in there.
The illicit journey would not be easy. It was April. The snow was melting and everywhere the ground was sodden. The roads were like a quagmire. And if he got caught …
From under his bed he pulled out the box in which he kept his personal papers. There was the letter to his pare
nts he had begun the previous evening. And there was the letter from his little sister, smuggled in three days before. Written in her large, childish handwriting, it was quite brief and to the point.
Dear Seriozha,
I am very unhappy. I wish I could see you.
Olga
He read it again and smiled. Life at the prestigious Smolny School for Girls in the city of St Petersburg could be grim. He was not surprised that his lively, bright-eyed little sister was hating her first year. And though the risks might be great, he had only asked himself one question when he received the letter: what would Pushkin do? For Pushkin would have gone to her. Pushkin was his hero.
Sergei Bobrov was happy at Tsarskoe Selo. He was quick, intelligent, and even had talent. He could draw well and make up a verse in French or Russian better than any other boy in his class. ‘But if only I could do these things like Pushkin,’ he would sigh. Pushkin: the boy writer of daring verses; the cartoonist. Pushkin with his mop of curly hair, his soft but brilliant eyes, his wayward humour. He was always getting himself into scrapes – and always after women too. That year was his last at the school, and though some of the masters thought he was a mischief-maker, to the boys he was already a celebrity.
It was thanks to a common interest that Pushkin had taken notice of Sergei – a love of Russian folk tales. His nanny Arina, the serf woman, had taught Sergei most of what he knew: the tale of the fabulous firebird, the hero Ilya of Murom – ‘You should see my fat brother Ilya for a real comparison with the legendary hero!’ he would laugh – and countless others. Even Pushkin was impressed with his knowledge. ‘Always keep those folk tales in your mind, my young versifier,’ he would say. ‘They contain the true spirit, the special genius of Russia.’
It was Pushkin, however, who had led Sergei into serious trouble. It had begun with a cartoon – scandalous but light-hearted – which Pushkin had drawn after the final defeat of Napoleon. It showed the angelic Tsar Alexander returning in triumph – but having grown so fat in the west that the triumphal arches were hastily being widened for him! It was some months later that Sergei followed his hero. His target, however, was the new and intensely pious Minister of Education – one of the noble Golitsyn family. And his cartoon showed the Minister making a detailed personal inspection of the girls at the Smolny School, to ascertain their morals! It was outrageous, and though few of the teaching staff at the school had any love for the authoritarian minister, he was solemnly warned: ‘Any more trouble from you, Bobrov, and you’ll be expelled.’
Whatever the risk of trouble, however, Sergei knew what he must do. It’ll be all right, he told himself. And anyway, I won’t let Olga down.
The early morning was still dark when Sergei slipped out. A groom was waiting for him with a horse half a mile from the school and soon he was clattering down the road to St Petersburg. The road was empty. Sometimes he passed between long, dark lines of trees that seemed about to come together and smother him. Then the land would open out into a wasteland of desolate brown traversed by grey gashes of unmelted snow. More than once, he half-expected to hear the cry of a wolf. The icy wet air stung his face.
And yet he was happy. A day before, he had sent a message to Olga, telling her where to meet him, and in his mind’s eye he could see her pale face and hear her voice saying: ‘I knew you would come.’ It made him feel warm inside. How lucky he was to have such a beautiful sister. How happy he was to be a Bobrov.
And how fortunate to be alive – and a Russian – at such a time! Never had the world looked so exciting. The great threat of Napoleon had finally been laid to rest in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. Now the British had put the aggressor of Europe on the distant Atlantic island of St Helena, from which there would be no escape. Russia, meanwhile, was now stronger than ever before in her history. Down in the south-east, in the Caucasus Mountains, the ancient Kingdom of Georgia had at last been joined to Russia’s empire. In the north, Finland, long under Swedish control, had also been taken over by the Tsar. In the distant east, across the sea, Russia not only possessed Alaska but had now established a fort in California too. And, most splendid prize of all, at the great Congress of Vienna where, after Napoleon, the assembled powers had redrawn the map of Europe, Russia had been given almost the whole of her ancient rival Poland, with her lovely capital of Warsaw.
But what really excited young Sergei was Russia’s new place in the world. No longer the barbarous Asiatic kingdom cut off from the western world; no longer the backward pupil of Dutch and German adventurers, English and French. At the congress, it was the Russian Tsar who took the lead. More even than this, Russia had proclaimed her own, special mission.
‘Let us put a final end to these terrible wars and bloody revolutions,’ the Tsar had proclaimed to the governments of Europe. ‘Let the European powers come together in a new and universal brotherhood, founded solely on Christian charity.’
This was the famous Holy Alliance. It was, by any standards, an astonishing document. Russia even proposed a shared, European army – the first international peace-keeping force – to police this universal order.
Admittedly such grand ideas had existed before, in the days of the Roman Empire or the medieval Church; but the Holy Alliance with its mystical language was profoundly Russian. And if the devious diplomats of the west signed it with a cynical smile, and the pragmatic British refused even to do that, every Russian knew that the west was corrupt. Simple, straightforward, warm-hearted, fervent: the Holy Alliance was the Russians at their best. No wonder that young Sergei Bobrov the schoolboy felt exalted.
The city of St Petersburg was already in sight, under a platinum sky, when Sergei reached the post-house where he changed horses; and the harsh, bright morning was well advanced by the time he entered the capital.
The Smolny Convent School lay some three miles east of the Winter Palace, at the far end of the Neva basin where the river curved round to the south. Since he had time, Sergei took a leisurely route along the embankment beside the pink granite of the quays, past the great statue of the Bronze Horseman, the old Admiralty and the Palace. The Admiralty – though it still contained shipyards – was being refashioned to a severe neo-classical design, surmounted by a high, golden flèche to echo the slim golden spire of the St Peter and St Paul Cathedral across the water. Sergei breathed a sigh of contentment. How wonderful it was to be in St Petersburg.
There was another reason, too, for his excitement.
For in the northern capital of St Petersburg, in the month of April, it was the season of the break-up of the ice. Though much of the snow and slush had been cleared from the grey streets, there remained, through the centre of the city, the great white lagoon of the frozen Neva, and at this time it began to melt. The roads across it had been dismantled. Soon, before the ice floes began to move, they would take up the pontoon bridges too. And today, as he rode along the embankment, he could see great fissures across the Neva’s surface and, from time to time, hear a great crack, loud as a pistol shot, as another section broke up. How thrilling it was, on this chilly, damp morning, to feel the wet air on one’s face and know that here, too, the huge northern world, in its own indomitable fashion, was making life anew. As Sergei rode along, his young heart was dancing.
And it was dancing with excitement still as he came to the long, closed wall of the Smolny Convent.
He had told Olga in his message exactly where to go and when. Pushkin himself had told him about the little window in the wall where one could enter unobserved. Sure enough, it was there, about twelve feet up. Having left his horse at an inn, therefore, Sergei discreetly made his way to this spot and waited. He waited an hour. Then at last the window opened.
There were two hours before she would be missed. They sat side by side in the little whitewashed room, his arm around her shoulder and her head, from time to time, resting upon his chest as they talked softly together.
He loved her. Of the other Bobrovs, she resembled Alexis the most. Her build was s
lender though there was nothing weak about her long limbs and elegant, tapering hands. She had her brother’s slightly Turkish features with a long, chiselled nose, and a mouth that turned down with faint irony at the corners; but whereas there was a trace of cruelty in Alexis’s face, in hers there was only refinement. Her eyes were deep blue and sometimes seemed a little startled at the world, although they could suddenly become transformed into a glowing gaiety. And how gratefully, now, they looked up at him.
She was not happy, and no wonder. The education at the Smolny School was outstanding. As well as the embroidery, dancing and cooking one might expect young ladies to learn, the girls were taught languages, geography, mathematics and physics as well – a progressive education which astonished visitors even from America. But the discipline was harsh. ‘We sing psalms before every meal,’ Olga said sadly. And then, shaking her head: ‘It’s a prison.’ For from autumn until the end of spring, when the school year ended, the Smolny girls were virtually locked in the convent precincts. ‘I hate them all, even the other girls,’ she whispered.
He understood that she was only lonely. He held her gently, her long brown hair falling across his arm, and let her talk for nearly an hour until, gradually, she became more cheerful and even began to laugh. Then, nestling close to him she murmured: ‘Enough of my boring life, Seriozha. Talk to me. Tell me about the world.’
It made him so proud, to know that she looked up to him. And since his own mind was so full of ideas, it was no time before Sergei was excitedly outlining to her his hopes for the future.
‘The Tsar will create a new Russia,’ he told her. ‘Serfdom is going. There’ll be a new constitution. Look at what he’s already done in the Baltic states and in Poland. That’s the future.’
For as well as now abolishing serfdom in the Lithuanian and Baltic territories, Tsar Alexander had just amazed everyone by granting the newly acquired kingdom of Poland a very liberal constitution, with almost no censorship, an elected assembly, and votes for a wide section of the population.