City of Silence (City of Mystery) (26 page)

“Are
you quite certain you want to stay in Russia?” Tom asked, a question that was directed
toward Ella even though his eyes never left Tatiana.

The
question seemed to pull Ella up short.  “This is where my destiny lies,” she
finally said.

“Well,
you certainly sound Russian.”

“Fatalism
is the true national contagion,” Ella said with a slight laugh.  “And I fear I
have caught it.  This baby will be the salvation of Serge as well, as you have
undoubtedly noticed, doctor.  Your eyes are very sharp.  He and I shall have
our child and Konstantin will have his new life in Paris.  He is innocent, we
all know this, but once a man has been singled out by the private guard, the
truth does not seem to matter.  Tatiana will concur with this opinion, I
believe, and realize that I do not mean it as a criticism of her husband, but
simply as a pragmatic analysis of the situation.”  

She
is so like her grandmother, Tom thought.  Moving people about to suit her aims.
 Manipulating the world and calling it fate.

Tatiana
had now closed the trunk and was buckling the strap.  “And if Konstantin gets his
freedom and Ella and Serge get a child, what do you gain from this bargain?” 
Tom asked her.  “You seem the forgotten soul in this grand plan.”

“I
gain redemption,” she said quietly.  “My sins have been numerous, Dr.
Bainbridge.”

“Somehow,
my dear Mrs. Orlov, I doubt that your sins have been any more numerous or more damning
than those of anyone else.”

“She
will live in the closest proximity to the child,” Ella said, her voice
conveying no particular understanding that such proximity might well be a
torment and not a relief.  “And not just this year, when Tatiana and I must
remain inseparable, even after the men have returned to the city in the fall. 
She will always attend me, and thus my family.  Her husband will become guard
to mine.  It happens all the time you know, this swapping back and forth of
servants.  And I assure you, Doctor Bainbridge, that Tatiana and Filip shall be
rewarded for their loyalty, both of them.”

“Yes,”
said Tatiana.  “And besides, life is long, is it not, Dr. Bainbridge?”

“For
some of us it is far longer than it is for others,” he said.  The most painful
part of the affair was not the woman’s sacrifice, but the faint flash of hope
which remained in her eyes.  She was clinging to the idea that she might someday
yet join her lover in Paris, a dream Tom deemed unlikely.  Once the child was
born Tatiana would undoubtedly find it impossible to leave, knowing that she would
never again see her son or daughter.  She would trade away any chance for her
own future happiness and remain forever in the thankless role of Ella’s new
lady in waiting, and thus servant to her own flesh and blood.

“I
shall write my grandmother this afternoon,” Ella said.  “And all you must do,
when she asks, is confirm that you did indeed tell me that St. Petersburg is a
dangerous place for a woman in such a delicate condition.  She will readily believe
you.  She hates this city and has always claimed that the entire Winter Palace
was built on a web of pestilence, ready to split and sink back into the Neva at
the slightest provocation.”

“You
don’t wish to tell the Queen your happy news in person?” Tom asked.  It seemed
Ella was far more concerned with what her grandmother might say or do than she
was with the reaction of her husband.  The men in their lives cannot possibly
be so gullible as these women are betting, Tom thought.  If the rumors are true,
then Serge will certainly know Ella cannot be with child and even if Tatiana
managed to conceal her own condition from Filip throughout the summer, it was
unlikely she would be able to avoid all intimacies throughout the autumn and
winter, up until time for the child to be born.  Some luckless doctor on the
coast would have to be taken into their plan, bribed or threatened to attend
Ella and then deliver Tatiana.  Tom observed the two women in the reflection of
the mirror which hung on the far wall.  They were in many ways different – Ella
tall and russet haired, Tatiana with a bird-like frame and mass of blond curls
– but they both were beautiful and he supposed that this singular fact might be
the key to their ultimate ability to sell this extraordinarily unlikely story,
to somehow keep the illusion afloat.  Men believe what they want to believe
when it comes to women, especially when it comes to female fecundity, truly the
greatest magic trick of them all.

Ella
tossed her head.  “No, I shall write Granny a note to be delivered only when it
is time for her to depart.  We have quarreled once already, which is quite
enough.  Did you know?   But of course you do.  Everyone in the Winter Palace
knows the business of everyone else.  Some claim it to be the largest residence
in the world but when it comes to privacy, we may as well be a gaggle of
peasants living in a one-room hut.  But it doesn’t matter.  By this time next
summer Serge and I shall be visiting England with a baby in our arms.  And the birth
of a child has a way of making everything new and right, does it not?  Old
discords are forgotten and the future seems suddenly hopeful.”

“I
hope you are right,” Tom said.  “For your sake and the sake of everyone
involved, especially the child.”

“Granny
will forgive me when she sees the baby,” Ella continued, speaking more to
herself than to the others.  “The child will come with the new year, which is a
good sign.  They say the earlier in the year a child is born, the more
auspicious its future, do they not?”

“I’ve
never heard that particular theory,” Tom said.  His own birthday was in late
November.

“Tell
me doctor, have you ever seen a Fabrege egg?”

Another
of her jarring changes of subject, but by now Tom was growing use to them.  “I
have certainly heard of Fabrege.  He is the royal jeweler, is he not?”

Although
the room was Tatiana’s, Ella confidently went to a bureau drawer and opened
it.  “I want you to see something,” she said.  “I had it commissioned weeks ago,
on some impulse I could not have explained, and now Tatiana has agreed to hide
it for me until the proper time.”  She unwrapped a cloth of blue velvet and
revealed a golden egg, about the size of her hand, the top of it crusted in
rubies and emeralds.

“It
is the only one of its kind,” she said, her voice sinking to a whisper.  “They
are all individual, you know, created by the master to mark a particular
occasion or celebration.”

She
handed it to Tom, who cautiously turned it over in his palm.  There were not
only the large jewels at the top, but the egg was covered with a profusion of
carefully wrought vines, each one coming to bud in the form of a
perfectly-shaped seed pearl. The value of such an item was inestimable.

“You
will take it, yes?” Ella said quietly.  “To remember your time here in Russia?”

This
is a land, Tom thought, in which anything can be bought.  A woman’s child.  A
doctor’s silence.  The passage of a suspected murderer across a national
border.

“The
grandness of the gift overwhelms me,” Tom said. “But I fear I cannot accept.  It
is my duty and my honor to serve your Royal Highness in any capacity.”

“Your
Imperial Highness,” she corrected.

“It
is my honor to serve your Imperial Highness,” Tom amended, wondering once again
what sort of subtle psychological nightmares awaited Tatiana Orlov during her
long dark autumn by the sea with this woman.

“And
have you seen this part?  It is exceptionally clever,” Ella went blithely on,
changing mood so rapidly that Tom wondered if she was not merely spoiled and
self-centered, but somehow mentally unsound.  Ella pressed a panel in the
center of the egg and a small golden hen popped out of the top. 

“Many
of them are like this,” she said.  “Designed with some sort of surprise inside,
whether it is a small portrait of the person giving the gift or perhaps some
symbolic message.  As in this case, do you see?  The hen represents fertility
and is thus a subtle way for a woman to tell a man that she is carrying his
child.”

“Then
perhaps this particular egg should be given to the baby’s father,” Tom said.

“Ah,
yes” said Ella.  “Yes, perhaps you are right.  But see here, this part is
clever.  You press the panel on the other side and, just like this, our golden hen
is gone.”

“So
it is a trick,” Tom said.

“I
suppose a trick is precisely what it is,” Ella said with a shrug, as she
carelessly rolled the egg back into the blue velvet cloth and replaced it in
Tatiana’s bureau drawer. “But it is a pleasing one, is it not?

The
Streets of St. Petersburg

3:54
PM

“You
seem to work rather lenient hours.”

Davy
looked at Vlad out of the corner of his eye.  Was this a challenge?  Were they
onto him somehow?  “The Queen does most of her paperwork in the morning,” he
said.  “Any correspondence she sends is likely gone by early afternoon.”

“Lucky
for you, I’d say.”

“Are
you about to tell me that the work of a revolutionary is never done?”

To
Davy’s relief, and somewhat to his surprise, Vlad laughed.  He was such a
serious sort that Davy found it hard to tell when he would accept a joke on
face value and when it might prickle his sensibilities.  The two young men were
walking in a rather indirect fashion toward the Volya meeting, a stroll which
Davy was enjoying, since it gave him the opportunity to see more of the city.  The
streets of St. Petersburg were broad and beautiful, with space between the
buildings and a more modern sense than one found in London.  This openness is what
you get when you build a city from scratch rather than letting it evolve over
centuries, Davy thought, trying to remember all that Emma had told them on
their lectures at sea.  She had unleashed a torrent of facts on their heads in
a matter of days and Davy doubted that a fraction of it had truly sunk in to
any of them.  He wondered if Emma would be willing to tutor him on history when
they returned to London, but at a more civilized pace, perhaps one evening a
week in Geraldine’s parlor.  It would be embarrassing to ask her, an admission
of how limited his past education had been, but he suspected she would say yes.

“What
is the meeting about today?” he further ventured, since Vlad appeared to be in
good humor.

“A
licking of wounds,” Vlad said.  “We had a great plan which fell through when
one of our comrades was killed.”

“The
ballet dancer.”

Vlad
sighed.  “What are they saying of the matter inside the palace?”

“That
it was a double suicide.”

“They
would call it that, wouldn’t they?”

“I
take it you don’t agree.”

“Of
course not.  Yulian Krupin was not the sort to kill himself.  In fact, he was
disgustingly happy.”

Davy
raised an eyebrow. 

“Oh
you know, happy,” Vlad elaborated, flapping his hands about like wounded birds. 
“He had a girl in his bed, food in his belly, a ticket to Paris in his pocket. 
Besides, even if his life hadn’t been such a plum, Yulian didn’t have the
bollocks to do himself in, especially not with a knife to the throat.  My guess
is that someone within the palace did the deed for him.  Someone who had
figured out who and what he was.”

“And
do you have any notion as to who that might have been?”

Vlad
hesitated.  “You know the members of the Queen’s private guard?”

“We
all traveled over together, of course.”

“What
do they think of security within the Palace?”

Now
it was Davy’s turn to hesitate.  But after running through several
alternatives, he decided that the most appropriate response was also the most
truthful.  “They don’t hold it in high regard.  The place is so big and spread
out that it seems the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.  The
tsar’s private guard is a different group entirely from the palace police and
the two entities don’t share information.  That sort of thing.”

“The
Russians are all fools.  I assume that this is what the Queen’s British
bodyguards think?”

Davy
was conscious that his mouth was dry and his heart seemed to be pounding its
way up his throat.  How on earth had he, he of all of them, been placed into
this sensitive position?   “I have never heard them call the Russians fools,”
he finally ventured.  “But they have said that they find the structure of the
Palace inefficient, at least from the standpoint of security.”

“Which
is precisely what Yulian reported to the Volya,” Vlad said, his tone of voice
once again mild.  They were walking across the expanse of a great public square
and Davy was suddenly, at the sight of the giant statue of Peter the Great,
oriented to where he was in the city.  “When he first told us about the plans
for the Tchaikovsky ball we scarcely believed him.  He described a scene of
such confusion, with so many people coming and going in costume, that it was
almost as if the tsar had sent the Volya an invitation to attend the event.”

“The
Tchaikovsky ball?”