The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  Jens didn’t even blink.

  “It’s rare,” he said with a gallant bow to Valentina, “to meet a fellow enthusiast. May I cut in for a moment or two? To talk stars, you understand.”

  “Well, no, actually I ...” The young lieutenant started to refuse, but he was no match for Madam Davidova.

  “Delighted to dance with you.” She launched herself into his arms with the speed of a military attack.

  The lieutenant had no alternative but to relinquish his partner. Jens stepped in and swept Valentina away.

  STARS?” VALENTINA QUERIED. ”Yes. Orion’s Belt. The Great Bear. The North Star.”

  There was a pause.

  “That’s it?” she asked.

  “You want more? There’s the Giant’s Hammer and Astralis Gigantis ... I could go on. Awesome sights, all of them.”

  “What makes you think I’m interested in stars?”

  He flashed her a teasing smile, aware of her gaze on him, one eyebrow raised in a delicate arch. “I wanted to ask you something. How else was I to hack a path through that forest of uniforms around you?”

  She gave him a mock frown. “Tell me what it is you want to ask.”

  He became serious. “Why were you angry with me? At the concert, I mean. Scowling at me as though I had the devil on my shoulder.”

  She threw her head back in a laugh that was so relaxed and natural in this unnatural world of jewels and corsets and crimped curls that it took him totally by surprise. It was a wonderful sound. Rich and infectious. He spun her in a quick turn across the floor. This close he could see that her eyes were not just brown but gold and brown, as if whoever painted them had dipped the brush in the wrong color pot. His gaze drifted to the creamy smoothness of her throat.

  “It was nothing,” she smiled. “I was just being a silly schoolgirl.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m not angry with you any more. Nor am I a schoolgirl anymore.”

  “So what are you? One of this season’s debutantes, here at court to find a husb—?”

  “I’m here because my parents ordered me to be here.”

  “Ah.”

  He could feel the sudden heat of her anger, though she hid all trace of it from her face, but her fingers in his betrayed her. He let her dance in peace, no more questions. She seemed to float deep within the music as he guided her away from the throng of swaying couples toward the ballroom door, and as soon as she saw it within reach he heard her take a deep breath. Felt her small ribs expand under his hand on her back and he had a sense of a creature scenting freedom.

  “Would you care for me to show you the Astralis Gigantis?” he asked with a straight face. “A star that not many people have ever seen before, I believe.”

  “I would be fascinated.”

  He liked the hint of mockery in her voice.

  She turned quickly to walk through the double doors to the refreshment room beyond, and as she did so he smelled the fragrance of her hair. The beautiful dark waves he’d seen at the school were pinned up in an elaborate coiffure high on the back of her head, emphasizing her high cheekbones and long neck. As she walked in front of him, a small slight figure in her white silk gown nipped in to her tiny waist, he experienced a strong impulse to extract the large pearl hair comb in her coiffure and release the thick coils. As though it would release her. He felt an urge to set free whatever it was she was holding in so tight.

  He steered her to one of the tall windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, draped with golden velvet and decorated with silk flowers. Valentina leaned toward it as though the night outside held something she wanted.

  “Which one is this Astralis Gigantis of yours?” she asked softly.

  “It’s up there somewhere, I promise you, just waiting to be found.”

  “I hope so. I like to think there are more to discover.”

  “There is always more to discover, Valentina.”

  She made no comment but swayed to the distant music, her reflection insubstantial among the shadows outside.

  “May I have something to drink?” she asked.

  So he fought his way to the refreshment room, but by the time he returned with a glass of lime cordial in one hand and a stiff brandy in the other, it was too late. The uniforms had gathered around her. Like bees. He could hear their hungry buzz. He pushed his way through them to where a tall fair-haired captain of the Hussar Guards in a scarlet uniform was holding her dance card between his fingers, talking heatedly. Jens took one look at Valentina’s face and placed the drinks on a table, plucked the dance card out of the captain’s fingers, tore it in two, and returned it in the man’s hand with a curt bow.

  “Excuse us,” he said, and tucked Valentina’s hand under his arm. “We have a star to inspect.”

  As they walked out of the room, he felt her shaking. For one appalling moment he thought she was crying, but then he glanced at her face and saw the laughter.

  Ten

  A SLEIGH RIDE. VALENTINA GASPED, THE AIR WAS SO COLD. The wind tugged at her beaver fur hood and her hands were tucked firmly inside the fur muff on her lap. She liked the cold. It scraped away the stink of cigars from her skin. The Viking had bundled the rug around her, so that only the tip of her nose and her chin gleamed pale in the stretch of moonlight.

  The sleigh was fast over the snow, its greased metal runners singing like music, the horse’s hooves barely audible. The Viking drove the open sleigh with relish. It should have made her nervous but didn’t. Her mother would faint with horror if she found out. Valentina shouldn’t be here at all, she knew that, but in her opinion she shouldn’t be at the ball either. The sleigh flew through the streets of St. Petersburg, along the granite Embankment, past the bridge where the towers of the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul loomed. Mist lay like a winter coat on the river, blurring the reflected lamplight into greasy smears.

  He didn’t talk. That suited her. She closed her eyes, listening to the hum of the runners. He was taking her away from the city lights so that they could look at the stars. A smile rose to her chilled lips. No one had ever shown her the stars before.

  THAT’S ODYSSEUS. HE WAS A GREAT WARRIOR WHOM THE gods couldn’t bear to let die, so they flung him up into the heavens where they could wrestle with him whenever they grew bored.”

  Valentina pointed to another cluster of stars. There were thousands of them, sharp pinpricks of light in the thick black arc of the sky. “What are they? They’re beautiful. They seem so close.”

  “They’re Zeus’s handmaidens. Each one was an earthling girl when the all-powerful god fell in love with them. He stole them. Raised them up to be his eternal handmaidens. It’s said they all have flowing brown locks and deep brown eyes.”

  She suddenly realized he’d stopped looking at the night sky and was staring directly at her. “You’d better watch out,” he said. “You’re just his type.”

  She laughed. “I wouldn’t mind being up there, looking down on all the puny efforts of the tiny creatures on earth. It would be a relief. To be free from all”—she waved her fur muff in the vague direction of the city—“this.”

  He raised his head and sat up. They had been leaning back in the sleigh as they gazed at the stars.

  “Is it so bad?” he asked softly.

  She thought about it. About bombs in the hands of revolutionaries. Two government ministers had been murdered by them: Sipyagin at the Mariinsky Palace, and Vyacheslav Plehve had one tossed into his carriage. Even Alexander II, the tsar’s grandfather, was killed by one. The magnificent Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built on the spot beside the Griboedov Canal where the fatal explosion took place. She thought about her father’s face when he said, You did this to her, and about the lifetime of dress fittings and tea parties her mother would condemn her to. About the woman with the shiny scar stamped on her skull. About Katya.

  “No,” she lied, “it’s not so bad.”

  “You play the piano like an angel. Isn’t that worth st
aying down here for?”

  “I’d persuade Zeus to let me play it in the heavens too.”

  “Ah yes. Join in with the music of the spheres. He’d be a fool not to let you.”

  She couldn’t see his face as she leaned back in the sleigh, concentrating on the gleaming diamond chips in the sky above her. The moonlight streamed from behind him, robbing him of any features. Just his hair shone bright where it curled out under his thick fur hat, but it shone purple, not red, in the strange thieving light.

  “What is it you do?” she asked. “Other than walk out of concerts and drive sleighs like a madman.”

  His laugh echoed through the vast silence of the night. They were outside the city, on the edge of the forest where the snow lay like a silver tablecloth spread out for them in the moonlight and the trees huddled behind them like a dark ragged army, whispering together.

  “For your information,” he said, “I didn’t walk out of the concert. The tsar ordered me back to work.”

  “Oh.”

  “As for sleighs, yes, I like to drive them fast when I have a good horse between the shafts.” He leaned a fraction closer, and she could see his breath trail from his lips in the frosty air.

  “What is it you do?” she asked again.

  “I’m an engineer.”

  “An engineer? Does that mean you make things?”

  “Yes, you’re right. I make things.”

  She could hear the smile in his voice. He was laughing at her. She sat up straight, forcing him to twist in his seat beside her. Now she could see his face.

  “What kind of things?”

  “Tunnels.”

  “Tunnels? What sort of tunnels?”

  “For water. For sewage. For drains. But I’ve also built them through mountains. For trains.”

  Valentina was speechless. She’d never in her life met anyone who did anything so constructive.

  “And for fun I tinker with engines,” he added. “I like fiddling with metal.”

  She stared at his silvery face and saw the way the words slid out over his lips as if they were nothing. I’ve also built them through mountains. Such small words for something so big. She wanted to cry, she envied him so much. Instead she said, “How interesting.”

  But he must have heard something in her voice. Or seen something in her face. Because he studied her for a long moment, during which the horse lifted its head and pricked its ears toward the black line of the forest as if it had heard something.

  “Playing the piano the way you do is a rare talent,” Jens said softly. “You are still young, yet you play with your whole heart and soul.”

  She looked away.

  “You must have worked very hard,” he said, “to be so good.”

  “You can’t call that work. Not real work. Not like building tunnels.”

  “Valentina.” He touched her arm. His gloved hand was outside the fur rug while hers was underneath, so it hardly counted as a touch. But she was aware of it even so. “Valentina, which do you think gives people more pleasure? A tunnel? Or music? Which lifts the heart and makes it sing? Beethoven or Brunel?”

  She laughed and felt a rush of gratitude toward this unruly Viking who had whisked her away to the middle of nowhere to study the stars. “Who is Brunel?”

  “An English engineer. Isambard Kingdom Brunel.”

  It was the way he said it. The respect in his voice.

  “Is he good?” she asked.

  “He was one of the greats.”

  She nodded. “I’m jealous.”

  “I know.”

  Again he brushed her arm with the touch that was barely a touch. “Women are not given the chance,” he acknowledged, “to be useful. But it will change, Valentina, given time.”

  “I haven’t got time,” she said fiercely.

  Her comment took him by surprise. She could see it in the sudden stiffness of his jaw. But the words wouldn’t stay in her mouth. “How would you feel if you had to sip tea and admire dresses and jewelry all day? Your mind would melt, I swear. I want to do something... more. I’m not a Russian matryoshka doll, I don’t want to be just an ornament. I want dirty hands and an exhausted brain and—”

  A noise emerged from the forest. The sound of horses, the approach of heavy wheels as something forced its way between the trees. Without a word, Jens picked up the reins and deftly clicked the somnolent horse into motion, so that the sleigh glided out of the moonlight and plunged deep into the shadows.

  THE WAGON NUDGED ITS WAY OUT OF THE FOREST. IT WAS lumbering toward the snowbound road like a large hump-backed animal, pulled by two elderly, heavy horses that wheezed as they hauled it into the moonlight. Behind the wagon five men trudged over the ruts and ridges, forcing their shoulders against the tailgate whenever the going grew tough. To Valentina it looked as though they’d been walking for a long time.

  The Viking was watching the dark figures intently. In the blackness she couldn’t see him, but she could sense the sharp spike of his curiosity. His hand gripped her arm, but she didn’t need to be told. Don’t move. The man at the front, the one leading the horses, was carrying a rifle. He shouted orders to the men behind, but she couldn’t make out the words. Jens bent close, his breath intimate on her cold cheek.

  “They’ll be gone,” he whispered, “as soon as they get the cart up on the road.”

  She nodded and risked taking her eyes off the rifle. The Viking was so close she could feel his pulse racing through him. He was no more than a darker shadow, invisible in the black forest, but she could hear his breath. In and out. Steady as a rock, reassuring her.

  “Probably hunters,” he murmured.

  Probably not, she thought but didn’t say.

  “On their way home,” he added.

  But both of them knew there was no elk meat in that cart. The moon plucked at the tarpaulin that was covering it, tied down with ropes, and whatever lay underneath looked bulky. The horses strained to haul their load up onto the raised level of the road, and the men pushed from the rear while the one at the front yanked hard on the animals’ leading rein. It pained Valentina to see a person handle horses’ mouths so harshly, but curses abruptly sliced through the silence.

  Jens saw it coming before she did.

  “It’s tipping over,” he warned.

  The weight in the wagon had shifted. One of the horses tried to rear out of the shafts, its hooves flashing, but the men fought hard, pushing and pulling till finally they halted the cart’s descent and manhandled it up the rocky slope onto the road. With a lurch the wagon settled on the snow-packed ground and the men leaned heavily against its wheels, chests heaving. That was the moment in which Jens’s horse took it into its head to call out a greeting to the exhausted nags. Jens tightened the reins and swore under his breath.

  “Valentina,” he spoke softly. No sign of panic in his voice. “Say nothing.”

  The man at the head of the wagon was striding fast toward the forest’s edge, searching for the source of the sound. Rifle alert in his hands.

  “Over here,” Jens called out.

  The man veered in their direction. She could hear the crunch of his feet over the snow. It clashed with the thumping of her heart.

  “Cover your face with your hood,” Jens murmured without turning away from the man.

  She pulled the beaver skin low over her face till only a small hole remained. She heard a bullet slam into the breech of the rifle as the footfalls drew closer and stopped. Jens’s hand crept under the rug and grasped hers.

  “Dobriy vecher,” he called out. “Good evening, friend. The lady and I came out for a quiet sleigh ride. We’ve no interest in your business, whatever it may be.”

  To her surprise the man’s response was a loud laugh as he slapped the shoulder of Jens’s horse with amusement. Valentina tried to draw air through her tiny hole, but her lungs had forgotten how.

  “Clear out of here,” the man said easily. “Take her back to Petersburg before she freezes her sweet little
arse off.”

  Jens withdrew his hand and flicked the reins into action, making the animal leap forward so fast the man had to jerk out of its path.

  “Spokoinoi nochi,” he called. “Good night, comrade.”

  The horse picked up its feet, eager to be on the move, and Jens kept the sleigh traveling fast across the snow in the direction of St. Petersburg.

  Valentina emerged from her hood. “That man wasn’t so dangerous.”

  The sleigh shook and juddered beneath her, so that she had to cling to its side.

  Jens laughed. “I’m glad you think so.”

  A loud crack reverberated. At first Valentina thought something had broken on the sleigh, one of the runners or a shaft fixing. But Jens swore furiously and whipped the reins along the horse’s back to drive it faster. One of his hands seized the back of Valentina’s neck.

  “Down!” he ordered.

  He forced her to the sleigh floor, face down in the dirt. She spat out a mouthful of filthy slush and that was when she heard the second crack. Followed by a third. Rifle shots.

  Jens didn’t let the horse slacken its pace for two miles.

  Finally he prodded her shoulder. “Safe now.”

  Her limbs uncurled and she slid back onto the seat, aching and embarrassed.

  “I was...” She stopped. What was the point in trying to explain? She’d seen what horrors men are willing to inflict on each other. A rifle? A bomb? It was all the same.

  “Frightened?” He snorted and allowed the horse to slow to a walk. “Damn right, you should be. So was I.”

  She stared at him. “Were you?”

  “Of course. Rifle bullets aren’t exactly friendly.”

  HE SMILED AT HER AND PULLED HIS FUR HAT DOWN OVER his ears. She could feel adrenaline tingling in her fingers. Or was that the cold? “The man wasn’t trying to kill us,” he said confidently. “The bullets went far too wide of the sleigh.”