The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  He read it in silence. “The captain is in Switzerland,” he informed her, “taking a spa cure for his injury. He doesn’t expect to be back in Petersburg till the end of the summer.” She heard the relief hiding in his words. They looked at each other with understanding, and she nodded.

  “Not long, Papa. You have till then. Whatever loans you have secured against the Chernov necklace will have to be repaid or relocated by the autumn because I will have to return the jewelry to him then.”

  “If you cared at all for your sister, you would marry the man.” He crumpled the letter in his fist.

  Valentina shook her head. “Please, Papa. It must be possible to find the money. Somewhere. Sell everything. Sell our house in Tesovo or even sell ...”

  Her father sank low in his chair behind the wide expanse of his desk, which was piled high with manila files and folders that threatened to topple on him. His cheeks were the dull color of overripe plums. “The banks already own everything we possess, Valentina. But I will try.”

  Thirty-two

  DESPITE MY FATHER. Despite Arkin’s disappearance off the face of the earth.

  Despite the wounds I bandage in the hospital wards and the patients I’ve seen die.

  Despite my mother being rarely at home and the heat of the city being worse than I can ever remember.

  Despite my hands looking like someone else’s hands.

  Despite all this, it is the happiest summer of my life.

  THE SUMMER WAS SLOW IN COMING. IT HUNG BACK LIKE a girl at her first ball. It started pale and tentative, the leaves on the lime trees reluctant to unfurl and the sun skulking behind clouds. St. Petersburg felt gray and tired. Factory smoke hung in a sooty pall above the roofs, too exhausted to move. But just when Valentina resigned herself to cold winds from the Gulf of Finland and no picnics with Katya this year, the season launched itself on them and transformed it into a gleaming glowing city of gold.

  It was the first year of her life that they did not spend the summer months on their estate at Tesovo. Valentina did not inquire why. It was obvious. Her father was preoccupied and spent all his time either at the ministry or locked away in his study with a crop of men in well-tailored frock coats and silk top hats coming and going all day with heavy attaché cases. But she had long ago determined she would never go near Tesovo again. How could she after what happened? How could Katya? And even sharper in her mind, Valentina knew she couldn’t leave Jens.

  It was a summer of walks, of arms brushing together, as his wound healed. The easy casual strength of him constantly astonishing her when he lifted her over streams or encircled her waist with his arm as she bent forward to pluck a ladybird from the surface of an ornamental pond. It was a summer of ice creams and dragonflies, of exploring the city, seeing it with new eyes because they were seeing it for the first time together.

  She took him to concerts of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky at the Alexandrinsky Theatre with its tall Corinthian columns, and he took her to Nikolaievsky Station to show her the wonders of the construction of its roof span and to explain in detail the workings of the shuddering steam engines. But she looked instead at the texture of his skin, at the dappled green of his eyes. Listened to the passion in his voice as he spoke, instead of to the labored breathing of the locomotives.

  There was the day they sat with their feet dangling in the river, the scent of mown grass heavy in the air and a squall of mist over the water, as he explained plans for the dredging of Neva Bay to improve the water flow in and out of the city. Sharing an apple, bite for bite.

  There was the day they took Katya to the forest, where a deer fed from her hand, and then to St. Isaac’s Cathedral, where Katya cried because it was so beautiful.

  There was the day he kissed her on the steps of the Hermitage.

  There was the day she and her mother stood at a window, watching Jens in the garden with Katya. He was straightening a spoke on the wheel of her chair, and she rested a hand on his shoulder as he crouched. And her mother saying in her ear, “Do you realize how much your sister loves him?”

  And just as the tail end of summer dipped into autumn she sat with Jens in an open carriage under the velvet darkness of a night sky, counting the stars, and she told him she was pregnant.

  WILL YOU MARRY ME?” JENS ASKED.

  Valentina’s heartbeat echoed in her ears. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips, turned it over and kissed its wrist. The moonlight sculpted his face into cold marble, but his eyes were burning with life.

  “Will you do me the honor of marrying me, Valentina Ivanova?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  She laughed. Joy tight and unyielding in her throat. “As soon as you like.”

  “Now.”

  She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was still there. Still owning her hand.

  “Jens, I swore to Katya that I would never leave her.”

  “Then she can come and live with us. My land deals with Davidov have done far better than I expected, so I shall buy us a splendid new house. With room for your sister as well.”

  He said it so effortlessly. As if it were such a small thing.

  “Thank you, my love.”

  He held her face between his hands. “I love you,” he murmured, and softly touched her lips with his own.

  “I won’t break,” she laughed.

  He drew her to him on the carriage seat and held her so close she could barely breathe. “I will speak to your father tomorrow.”

  “He won’t like it.”

  “He shall have to get used to it.” His hand found her stomach and started to caress its still-flat outline.

  “A boy,” she whispered. “An engineer to build a new Petersburg.”

  “A girl,” he smiled. “I want a girl.”

  “With my hair and your eyes.”

  “And your talent for music. A girl who will fly high with courage and ambition. A girl with an agile mind. Like her mother.”

  A fretful wind tugged a strand of her hair across her face, and she shivered.

  “You’re cold,” he said.

  “No. Excited.”

  He sat up and wrapped her in the warm rug, tucking it under her knees and around her neck. “I shall drive you home at once. You mustn’t catch a chill.”

  “Jens, I am not ill! I am pregnant.”

  He smiled at her, a look so tender in the silvery moonlight that her heart forgot to beat. But then he snapped the reins at the horse with a determined crack, and as he did so, she saw a pulse flicker at his throat. She would have reached out to touch it had her arms not been pinned under the rug.

  “Jens, it is my father’s birthday tomorrow. He has booked seats at the theater for the family and dinner at A’lours afterward.” The words tasted like soap on her tongue. “Please let him have tomorrow. Ask him the day after.”

  He whirled around to look at her. “God, give me strength! Haven’t I waited for you long enough?”

  “No,” she smiled at him.

  “One day. No longer.”

  THE FOLLOWING DAY A FAINT DRIZZLE BROUGHT TO AN end the stifling heat that had been gripping the city by the throat. The theater was a dazzling blaze of lights when the Ivanov family took their position in their box on the first tier, with its gilded scrollwork and plush velvet chairs. Below them in the auditorium the swell of voices rose. The elite of St. Petersburg society flashed their jewels and their gold medals at each other, competing with the glittering chandeliers for preeminence. The smiles were fixed, held in place beneath magnificent diamond tiaras that dragged many of their owners into such ferocious debt that it set grubby moneylenders rubbing their hands in anticipation. But to be seen at the opera in anything less would risk ostracism and scorn.

  Valentina hated it, but the music helped. It always did. Once the lights dimmed and the opera The Legend of Tsar Saltan took flight, Rimski-Korsakov’s dramatic arias gave Valentina something to hold on to. She closed her eyes and let the notes
come alive within her. She breathed more freely, picturing the room in Jens’s apartment. A reindeer rug soft as a kitten’s paw in front of the log stove. The touch of its fur on her naked back and Jens’s lips moving against the warm skin of her stomach, murmuring to the infant growing inside her.

  “Valentina, my dear girl, how exquisite you look tonight. You outshine the chandeliers.”

  Her eyes flashed open. “Captain Chernov!”

  His scarlet figure was seated right beside her. With a ripple of shock she realized that it was intermission and the others, including Katya in her chair, had withdrawn to the small anteroom to drink wine, eat caviar, and greet guests who had hurried in to pay their respects. He had not changed. All that pain and suffering, yet he had not changed. Just the teeth a little sharper, the eyes a little angrier.

  “You didn’t reply to my letters, Valentina.”

  “I am pleased to see you well again, Captain. I didn’t know you were back in Petersburg.”

  “I wrote to tell you I would be here.”

  She had read none of them.

  “I did write once,” she said. “To inform you that the engagement was at an end.”

  He laughed, a quick bark of sound, and bared more of his teeth at her. He seized her white-gloved hand from her lap and trapped it between his own. “You young ladies like to tease.”

  “No.” She tried to remove her hand, but he gripped it hard.

  Slowly, never taking his eyes from her, he raised her hand and pressed the back of it against his lips. Even through the fine leather she could feel the individual bristles of his mustache.

  “Let me go.”

  They were leaning toward each other, almost like lovers, their faces so close she could see a pink scar on his jaw that hadn’t been there before. She lifted her other hand and grasped two of his fingers, prepared to snap them off if he didn’t release her. Below in the theater, patrons were beginning to resume their seats and the hum of voices grew louder. Something made her look, a sense that she couldn’t explain, but suddenly she knew beyond doubt that Jens was here. At the far side of the auditorium she saw him, his hair wind-blown, as though he had rushed in from the street to see her. And now, he was seeing her. With one of her hands at the lips of this captain of Hussars, the other clutching two of his fingers, her face flushed and close to Chernov’s. She moaned and leapt to her feet, at last breaking his grip on her.

  “Jens!” she called, indifferent to the surprised looks from below. But he had gone. “Damn you, Stepan,” she said fiercely and ran from the box.

  SHE FOUND HIM IN THE BAR, SMOKING A CIGARETTE AND leaning against a marble column, indifferent to the crowd jostling around him.

  “Jens, I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Captain Chernov was just saying hello.”

  “A friendly hello, it seemed.”

  “No”—she rested her fingers on the sleeve of his jacket, trying to find him—“it wasn’t what it looked like. Jens, please, don’t—”

  A shout came from outside. A man in a cape and top hat that glistened with raindrops stood in the doorway.

  “The prime minister has been shot!” He bellowed the words again and again. “The prime minister has been shot!”

  There was a collective gasp in the bar. Jens wrapped an arm around Valentina’s waist and barged a path through the throng of drinkers to the man’s side.

  “What happened?”

  “Bozhe moi, my God, he was at the theater in Kiev tonight. One of those murderous revolutionaries drew a gun. He shot Stolypin in the chest. No bulletproof vest.” Tears were running down the man’s face.

  “Is he dead? Tell me, man,” Jens demanded.

  “They say he’s dying.”

  “Stolypin dying. God help Russia!”

  “Bistro!” The man yelled into the smoke-filled room. “Get out of here. Bistro! Quick! They say that the revolutionaries are coming to every theater tonight. In Kiev. In Moscow. To massacre us even here in Petersb—”

  He didn’t finish. The crowd lunged, panic wrenching them from their stupor, as they dropped their glasses and fled.

  VALENTINA HAD NEVER SEEN PANIC BEFORE. NOT LIKE this. Screams and shouts, feet pounding and voices falling apart. On the pavement outside the theater, slick with rain, hats were trampled underfoot as the crowd grew desperate. Elbows pushed and barged as people rushed to their carriages, calling for the coachmen, indifferent to the shouts of police in heavy cloaks who appeared from nowhere. Valentina was buffeted by an officer as she ran, wide-eyed with dismay.

  “Jens, it can’t be true, can it?”

  They were scouring the curbs for her family, but umbrellas hid heads from view, and top hats all looked alike in the darkness.

  “That Stolypin is dead?”

  “No.” She shook her head, her shoulder tucked hard against his. “That the revolutionaries are attacking every theater. Surely it can’t be true.”

  “It’s most likely a rumor to create chaos and fear. But we can’t take any chances, so stay close.”

  “Why?” She dug her heels in, so that Jens was forced to halt in the surging crowd and look down at her. “Why? What would they gain by causing such chaos?”

  “Let’s just find your carriage.”

  “No.” She shook his arm. “Tell me, what is it you fear?”

  He looked at her intently. “I fear that someone has organized this and is doing something under the cover of this panic.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know. Come, don’t stop now.”

  He pulled her forward, and she pointed ahead toward the jumble of carriages blocking the road. “There. It’s Papa’s.”

  Jens shouldered his way through, until they found her father and mother standing beside their carriage in the rain. The wheelchair waited empty and forlorn in front of them.

  “Where’s Katya?” Valentina asked quickly.

  “She’s gone.”

  WHO WOULD TAKE HER?”

  Jens had to ask the question twice. Elizaveta Ivanova was holding herself rigid, her eyes unfocused and her movements jerky as her fingers touched her mouth but her lips remained silent and uncooperative. Her husband was the reverse. Streams of anger poured from him; his feet stamped the ground and he jabbed a finger at one of the group of policemen who had gathered around them. “Get out there, you fool, and find my daughter,” he shouted. “She’s been kidnapped.”

  They were all back at the theater standing in the rain outside a side door. It was the one from which the Ivanovs had first emerged, carried along by the rush for the exits, with Katya safe in her wheelchair.

  “Madam Ivanova,” Jens asked, “tell me again what happened.”

  She didn’t look at him. Her mouth quivered but no sound emerged.

  “Elizaveta!” her husband urged.

  Jens placed himself directly in front of her, took both her elbows firmly in his grip, and drew her closer, so that she had to focus on him. “Was Katya hurt in the crush?”

  She shook her head, blinked hard, and murmured, “Nyet. She didn’t panic. Just held tight to her chair.” She drew her fair eyebrows together, frowning at the images ransacking her brain. “She ...” The words stopped.

  Jens lowered his face to hers. “What happened?”

  “My husband went off to find our carriage.”

  “Think, madam. Think. The minister left you and Katya here ... and then?”

  “Princess Maria and her husband came out behind me.”

  “You spoke to them?”

  He was losing her. Her gaze grew glassy as she nodded. “She was screaming.”

  “Katya was screaming?”

  “No.” It was a whisper.

  “Princess Maria was screaming?”

  No answer. He shook her gently and saw her eyes roll.

  “Yes. She’d fallen. Her cheek was ...”

  “You spoke to them?”

  “Yes.” She shuddered. “There was panic
everywhere. When I turned back to the wheelchair, it was empty.”

  “Mama.” It was the first time Valentina had spoken. Her voice was calm but sounded hollow, as if it came from far away. “Was Katya frightened? By the panic and the shouting.”

  “No. No, she was excited.”

  Valentina nodded. She seized Jens’s hand and started to pull him away. “Quickly. Come with me.”

  “Where are you going?” her father demanded. “What about your sister?”

  “Papa. I’m going to find her.”

  Rain was sliding down Valentina’s cheeks, and the light of streetlamps and carriages skidded off her bone-white face, changing its shape. Her eyes were the harsh color of coal.

  SHE RODE ON HIS HORSE WITH HIM. IT WAS QUICKER BY horse than in a drozhky cab. The roads were crammed with traffic, lights streaked through the darkness, and the rain grew heavier, drumming on carriage hoods with impatient fingers. Tempers flared and accidents occurred, causing more confusion.

  Jens’s horse, Hero, sidestepped it all neatly, with Jens guiding him up onto the sidewalks when necessary, until they were free from the blockages and could canter unhindered through the center of the city. They rode fast. Jens felt the heat from her. Could smell her wet hair. She was tucked inside his riding cape in front of him, her body like a furnace against his chest and her grip on the horse’s mane so fierce it almost tore the hairs from the animal’s neck. She sat stiff-backed and tense. They had argued fiercely.

  “Jens, it’s the revolutionaries who have taken her.”

  “No, Valentina, think carefully. It could be just greedy kidnappers, holding her to extort money from your father.” Dear God, don’t let it be the revolutionaries. Their knives would slit an upper-class throat, male or female, as readily as they would slice open a chicken.

  “No,” she’d insisted. “No. It’s them, I know it’s them. They torment my family and won’t be satisfied until we are dead.”