The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  She worked hard and spoke little. She didn’t mind that she spent most of her time in the sluice room scrubbing things and sterilizing equipment. That was a good part, the instruments. She handled them with respect, finding unexpected pleasure in their fine steel edges and baffling shapes. She liked the way each one had a specific purpose: a clamp, a probe, a syringe, and many that she could only guess at. Each day she and her fellow novice nurses were given an hour of instruction in which she focused her mind with the same intensity as when she learned a new piece for the piano. During her time in the wards, she asked clear questions and paid close attention to the answers.

  “You’re a good listener,” one of the patients told her.

  St. Isabella’s was a hospital for the poor. It had been set up more than one hundred years earlier at the insistence of Catherine the Great, but there were never enough beds and never enough wards. An unending stream of the sick and the dying stumbled through its doors, but many were turned away with no hope of finding treatment elsewhere. But Valentina was learning to lock things out of her head. Like the man this morning lying on the steps outside, dead as a dog. People with money didn’t use hospitals. They were places you went to die. Doctors would come to the houses of respectable people, numerous times a day if necessary, and treat patients in their own bed. They even performed minor operations there. Only for a major operation did a wealthy patient enter a hospital.

  Valentina plunged her hands deep into soapy water and started scrubbing a speculum, but after a minute she lifted her hands and inspected them. Red and raw, with hairline cracks around the knuckles. She felt a ripple of shame. A nurse’s hands, not a pianist’s hands. She hated herself for caring.

  A door swung open behind her. “Ah, there you are. We need you.”

  Valentina turned, suds dripping to the floor. It was young Darya Spachyeva, the nurse she met the day she came for her interview, the one with black hair and the swear words. Her wide smile was missing today.

  “Do you know,” Valentina asked, “that you have blood all down your neck?”

  “You have to come,” the girl said. “Quickly.”

  THE AIR LAY THICK AND HEAVY. WALKING INTO THE MEN’S ward was like wrapping her face in a stale blanket. Blood and fear and a deep raw anger packed the room so full that there was little space for anything else. Bodies lay everywhere: on beds, on mattresses on the floor, on thin blankets, on bare boards. Too many, far too many.

  “What happened?” Valentina demanded.

  “The Hussars.”

  “An attack?”

  “Well, they weren’t playing with their nice shiny sabers for nothing.”

  Valentina could see their smooth unlined cheeks. Young men with dreams that had been shredded. Blood streamed from their heads; gaping wounds yawned open on their shoulders. They had fought, on foot, against men on horseback.

  “Chyort!” Valentina swore.

  Captain Chernov had kept his promise.

  “Darya”—her pulse was thudding in her ears—“where do I start?”

  NURSE IVANOVA, TAKE THESE. BE QUICK.”

  Medsestra Gordanskaya thrust a pair of shears into Valentina’s hand and moved with calm efficiency to the other side of the ward, where Darya was struggling to prevent a man with a bandage over his eyes from crawling toward the door. Valentina laid a gentle hand on the patient in front of her. He was lying facedown.

  “Hello, I’m Sanitarka Ivanova.”

  She kept her voice firm and reassuring. With the shears she snipped through the material of his jacket from its hem right up to its collar, then the same with his shirt. Two long parallel cuts ran down his back like scarlet tram tracks. She bathed them with antiseptic, but as fast as she mopped up the blood, more flowed onto his white flesh. It needed stitches. All the time she worked, she talked to him. His frightened eyes, as he tilted his head to one side, kept darting up at her.

  “The doctor will be here any moment,” she assured him. “A few stitches, that’s all you’ll need.” She placed a dressing pad on the wound and pressed hard to stem the flow. “You’ll soon be back at work.”

  “They were waiting for us. Determined to finish us off this time.”

  “Were you marching?”

  “Nyet. No, just gathering in our factory yard. Me and the other apprentices.”

  “The soldiers attacked you in the factory yard?”

  “No.” His eyes fluttered closed and opened again, small fragmented movements, and a smear of vomit slid from his mouth. “We went down to the railway sidings to have talks with the rail workers. Their foreman was . . .” He started to sob, raw animal sounds.

  “Hush, you’re safe here.” She touched his hair on the back of his head and it was stiff and matted with blood. She stroked his cheek. His neck.

  “Nurse,” he whispered, eyes closed, “I can’t move my arms.”

  BISTRO! QUICKLY!”

  A doctor in a white coat summoned her. All day it had continued, the young men dragged in on carts, on shoulders, on makeshift stretchers. Valentina steeled herself to the moans and the tears. She learned to hold a man’s hand against her own throat because the strong pulse there somehow gave them something to hang on to. She learned not to say Hush. She let them talk or cry or shout. Whatever gave them respite. She wrote brief notes for them to their loved ones, held water to their bruised lips, and bound so many reels of bandage that the gauzy white strips seemed to become extensions of her own skin, skimming over arms and legs and heads. Holding their young bodies together.

  “Bistro!”

  “Yes, Doktor?”

  “One grain of morphine here.”

  “Yes, Doktor.”

  A young boy, dark as a gypsy and not much older than Katya, was lying on his back in a bed with his thin arms crossed over his chest. His skin was slick with sweat. He smiled at Valentina while his lips continued to form his prayers. She measured out two drops of the painkiller from a vial into a small glass and held his head while he sipped the liquid. His pupils were pinpoint specks.

  “Spasibo.” The word was so faint it was barely there. “Do svidania. Good-bye.”

  “He was crushed,” the doctor murmured. “By their horses.”

  “Is there a priest?” Valentina asked quickly.

  “He’s in the next ward.” He exhaled an exhausted sigh. “His services have been much in demand today.” He raised his head and looked properly for the first time at the young nurse at his side.

  “Valentina! My dear girl, I had no idea it was you. Your uniforms turn you all into—”

  “I know, Dr. Fedorin. We nurses all look the same.”

  “Hardly.” He brushed the back of his wrist across his eyes. “You and Medsestra Gordanskaya are scarcely the same species.”

  She smiled, and it was such a relief to untie the knots in the muscles of her face that she almost slipped an arm around his neck, the way she’d seen his daughter do when she was pleased with him.

  “You should take a rest, Doktor.”

  He shook his head. “This wasn’t exactly the kind of nursing I had in mind for you when I recommended you to St. Isabella’s.” For a moment Dr. Fedorin took his eyes off the wounded in the ward and studied Valentina’s face. She wondered what he saw there. “A baptism of fire,” he said quietly.

  The boy on the bed lifted one hand and carved the sign of the cross in the air. “A baptism of blood,” he corrected, eyes on Valentina.

  “I’ll find you the priest,” she said, then squeezed the boy’s hand and vanished.

  BUT THERE WAS NO PRIEST IN THE NEXT WARD. SHE BROKE the rules. Picked up her skirts and raced down one of the corridors, searching for a figure in black. She refused to let the boy die without the comfort of absolution. You need to be tough, Jens had told her. To deal with the blood and the wounds.

  A hand fell on her shoulder, so heavy she felt her bones sag, and she jumped away, startled.

  “Child, don’t be frightened.”

  She stopped running
and regarded the man who seemed to have appeared in the corridor from nowhere. He looked like a priest of some kind. He was an impressive broad-shouldered figure, imposing in a plain black tunic. And yet there was something about him that made her want to step away. His eyes were large and round, a striking pale blue and set deep in their sockets. They didn’t blink, just stared at her. They seemed to burn. She could find no other word for it. They fixed on her and burned right into the coils of her mind till she longed to look away, but couldn’t.

  “I need a priest,” she said quickly.

  “Child,” his voice was deep, his words measured. In the cold corridor they resonated with conviction. “Child, the whole of mankind needs a priest to show them the pathway to God. I see you are troubled. Let him cleanse you.”

  She almost laughed out loud. This strange man was anything but clean. She dragged her eyes from his and focused instead on his long straggly beard, which was filthy and matted with spilled food. His tunic was stained and his hands thick with grime. Worst of all, he stank. The only clean thing about him was the jeweled crucifix that gleamed on a chain around his neck.

  “Maybe you should ask God to cleanse yourself first,” she suggested. “But come quickly, please. You’re needed in—”

  He reached for her. Huge dirty hands. He clamped one on each side of her head and fixed his powerful gaze on hers. “You’re the one in need, malishka, little one. I can bring you the peace you crave. In the Lord’s name.”

  He lowered his head as though to give her the kiss of Christ on her forehead, but at the last moment he ducked down and placed the kiss on her lips. Shock and distaste shook Valentina as his mouth, huge and cavernous, swallowed hers. She lashed out. Her hand struck his cheek, the sound of the slap muted by his wiry beard, and all the hardship of the day poured into her anger.

  “You are no man of God. You are an impostor, a disgusting, lecherous—”

  He laughed, a delighted rumble of pleasure, as though the words she poured on him were words of praise. She was tempted to slap him again but couldn’t bear to touch him. She scrubbed at her mouth with her hand and kept a safe distance from him.

  “You’re needed by a boy who is dying,” she told him.

  “He doesn’t need me. You are the one who needs me.”

  “You are not a real priest, are you?”

  “I am just a poor starets. With humility I offer myself to souls in suffering, souls like yours. Souls who don’t know how to find their way.”

  “My soul is my own affair,” she said. “You are not a starets, not a holy man. This boy needs a proper priest.” His pale eyes held hers and she felt her tongue grow heavy in her mouth, her mind start to drift. With an effort of will she forced herself to turn away from the dark figure and hurry back down the corridor. She struggled to make herself dismiss him from her head.

  “Nurse,” he called after her in a deep voice. “Malishka, we shall meet again, you and I, and when we do you will offer me a kiss in exchange for your soul.”

  VALENTINA FOUND A PRIEST AT LAST, A REAL PRIEST. HE was dressed in a hand-woven cassock that was frayed at the hem, with a prayer stole around his neck, and wearing a tall black hat that had seen better days. At first sight she took him for a peasant priest who must have traveled to the hospital from an outlying village when he heard of the carnage, but when he responded to her shout, raising his head from intoning prayers over a wounded man, she recognized him at once. He was the priest she’d met with Arkin, the one she’d stumbled across when the chauffeur was unloading sacks of potatoes into a church.

  “Father, I need your help.”

  “What is it, Nurse?”

  “A young man is dying.”

  His reaction was not what she expected because, though he walked with an outward calm at her side when she led him to the other ward, his boots kicked out at the frayed hem ahead of him in a gesture of fury.

  “Father, do you know what happened?”

  “The apprentices work in terrible conditions.” His words were controlled, even if his feet were not. “They held a meeting after one of them lost a limb in a machine, but there are always police spies everywhere.” He shook his head and raised the Bible in his hand so that it was fixed in front of his eyes as he hurried along the corridor. “May the Lord God have mercy on the souls of those soldiers, because I can find none in my heart for them. I would damn the lot of them to hellfire for all eternity.” He shook the Bible fiercely as though his fingers could provoke an answer from its black cover. “The apprentices are little more than children.”

  “But they joined forces with the rail workers, I was told.”

  “Yes.”

  “So that must mean it was well organized.”

  As she pushed open the swinging doors the priest stopped, and she was forced to look back at him.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Just a nurse. Trying to help save the lives of your apprentices.”

  Just a nurse. Simple words. They seemed to calm him.

  His eyes became gentler, and he moved forward again. “Of course, I am distressed. What I saw today when the sabers slashed down, no man should see.” He clutched his Bible to his chest like armor.

  She put out her hand and touched the cross embossed on its surface. “You were there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, Father Morozov, was Viktor Arkin there too?”

  The bones of his face slackened. “Who are you?”

  “Was he hurt?”

  A shake of his head, so slight it was barely a movement.

  “Tell him,” she said, “to remove the box he has hidden at the back of the garage. Before the Okhrana come for him.”

  Twenty-four

  SANITARKA IVANOVA.”

  Medsestra Gordanskaya stopped Valentina as she was leaving the ward at the end of the day. The older nurse looked tired, something bruised about her eyes as though the day had taken too harsh a toll.

  “Sanitarka Ivanova, you did well today. You have the makings of a decent nurse.” Her features softened. “I admit, you surprised me.”

  “Thank you, Medsestra.”

  “Now go home and wash today away with scalding hot water and a slug of vodka, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Yes, Medsestra.”

  A decent nurse. She pulled her cape over her shoulders. A decent nurse.

  On the steps outside she bumped into Nurse Darya and immediately asked her, “Do you know the priest who was here today?”

  “Father Morozov? Yes, he’s often here. Can’t stand his preachy stuff myself”—she pulled a face and snatched off her headdress—“but he brings the patients food as well as comfort. They love him.”

  “No, not him. Another one. Dirty and repulsive. With hypnotic blue eyes and a very expensive-looking crucifix.”

  “Oh shit, that bastard. Didn’t touch you, did he?”

  “No.” The lie slipped out.

  “Don’t worry, that creep isn’t here often. Only when he feels like slumming it for a change.”

  “What do you mean? Where does he normally spend his time?”

  Darya poked Valentina in the ribs. “Jesus Christ, don’t you realize who that stinking bastard is?”

  “He claimed he was a starets, a poor holy man.”

  “Like hell he is. I wish I was that poor.”

  “Who is he?”

  “That’s Grigori Rasputin. The so-called miracle worker who spends his time at our fragrant empress’s side. Tell me you didn’t let him put a dirty paw on you.”

  “Miracle worker?”

  “That’s what he calls himself.”

  JENS, WHAT KIND OF WOMAN IS THE EMPRESS?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I was wondering what kind of person she is.”

  “Tsarina Alexandra? She has a cold and aloof manner and behaves like the arrogant German princess she is. But I’m not so sure how deep it goes.”

  He swept his hand up the delicate curve of her
naked hip and walked his fingers one by one up her ribs. He was sitting upright beside her on his bed because he loved to let his eyes feast on her. Feast. It had always struck him before as an absurd word for eyes, for how could eyes feast? But now he understood. His eyes felt hungry when she was not with him. No woman had ever done this to him, made him hoard the images of her like jewels inside his head. He tried now to work out what it was that had triggered this interest in the tsarina.

  “I believe,” he explained, “that a part of it is that she’s shy. The tsarina may be an aristocrat, but she has no idea how to make small talk, so she shuns the court’s social life and they resent her for it. But there’s no doubt that she’s a very determined character.”

  “Determined in what way?”

  “She keeps Tsar Nicholas shut away with her down in Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo most of the time. He works from there. I know it’s only twenty miles from Petersburg, but it’s twenty miles too far when there is so much unrest in the city. He has a duty here.”

  She nodded as though this were something she had given thought to. “Their four daughters, the young grand duchesses, they are shut away as well?”

  “Oh yes. Everyone says they all enjoy family life together, riding and sailing and playing games. They love tennis. And of course taking care of the boy. He’s the center of their universe.”

  “Yes, the boy, Tsarevitch Alexei.”

  He lowered his head and planted a gentle kiss on each of her knees. She buried her hand in his hair, drawing his face closer to hers.

  “What are you staring at?” she frowned.

  “You. I’m trying to work out exactly how you are put together.”

  “Why? Are you thinking of taking me apart?”

  He kissed her lips. “As an engineer, it would be an interesting challenge.”