Thirteen Years Later (60 page)

Fyodor Kuzmich.

Aleksei wondered if he would ever meet a man going by that name. He hoped so.

As he rode north, he felt the cold begin to penetrate him, but it was of no concern. He thrust from his mind thoughts of what had happened in Taganrog and the Crimea – even in Moscow with Kyesha. He turned his mind instead to what was ahead of him – Domnikiia and Tamara, only a few days away. The cold did not matter, however much he hated the winter. It could never be winter where they were.

It even began to snow – a light, fine snow that did not settle – but Aleksei did not mind. If it was snowing here, then it would be snowing in Moscow, and Domnikiia and Tamara would feel it too. The snow was therefore beautiful. He let the tiny white flecks embrace him, as though they were a blanket of stars.

T
HERE HAD ONLY BEEN THREE LETTERS FROM PAPA. THEY’D
all been in Russian, but Mama had helped Tamara to read them. Papa did it deliberately, she knew, to make her learn. It was nicer – even if it was harder – to read his words in Russian, because that was the language he normally spoke to her. It was only recently she had understood that French and Russian were separate. Her parents had laughed when she mixed the two, but not in a nasty way. She still did it now sometimes, but not nearly so much.

Papa had also sent letters to Mama, but Mama had not let Tamara read those. Instead she had read bits of them out to her. It was obvious that Papa had very important business with the tsar. She hadn’t believed Papa at first when he said who he was going to see, but now she was convinced. Even so, she wished the tsar would hurry up and let Papa come home. He’d been gone almost two months. He would be concerned to know how much taller she had grown – he always commented on that.

‘He’s there again,’ said Mama. Tamara looked up. Her mother was standing at the window, peeking through the curtains. The words had not been addressed to her; Mama had been talking to herself. She did that a lot, particularly when Papa wasn’t here.

‘
Who
’s there?’ asked Tamara.

Domnikiia looked down at her. There was a frown on her face, but it changed into a smile, which Tamara returned.

‘Will you be a good girl and stay here?’ she asked. Tamara nodded. Her mother began putting on her coat, buttoning it rapidly down the front. ‘I won’t be long,’ she said. She kissed Tamara on the forehead and departed.

The little girl waited for a few moments, then trotted over to the window. She lifted the heavy curtain up over her head and disappeared behind it to gaze down on the street below. Even in the twilight, the whiteness gleamed everywhere. It had begun to snow a couple of weeks earlier, and by now it had settled. Wherever Tamara and her mother went was covered with it. She remembered having seen snow before, but could not specifically remember it arriving like it had this year.

Tamara decided that she loved the winter, whatever Papa might think of it. He’d said in his letters how much warmer it was in Taganrog; perhaps that was why he was taking so long to come home.

There was a man standing outside in the snow. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, just standing there. It was the same man who had been there before – the man who had stood and watched Papa leave. Perhaps that meant that Papa would be returning soon. She hoped so.

Another figure walked out into the snowy street, emerging from somewhere below where Tamara stood, and heading out to join the first. This was someone she recognized. It was Mama.

Dmitry wondered if there was really much point to what he was doing. He could tolerate the cold and the snow blowing in his face, but that didn’t mean that he was actually achieving anything. Essentially, he wanted to irritate her – to scare her – though what either of those might accomplish, he wasn’t sure. And if he scared her then he might scare the innocent little girl who her trusting parents had placed in her care.

But the monotony allowed his mind to empty, and allowed the music to swell. It was still strange and beautiful, and if only a fraction would stick, he would be a happy man. More than
that, he would be a genius. Perhaps it was ambition like this that had persuaded God to prevent him ever remembering any of it. Perhaps God was just delaying the moment. Dmitry could wait.

He looked across the street. Someone was coming. The music faded as his attention was drawn. It was Domnikiia Semyonovna. He had been in no doubt that she was aware of being watched; now it seemed she had decided to do something about it. It was all to the good. Perhaps now he could really scare her off.

‘Just who the hell do you think you . . .’ Her voice tailed off as she approached him. Evidently she’d had no idea that it was Aleksei’s son who was watching her. ‘Oh,’ she said. She pulled down her fur-lined hood so that he could see her face. She tried to smile, but failed. Her mood seemed to have changed from anger to annoyance. ‘Your father asked you to keep an eye on us, I suppose.’

Dmitry looked at her blankly, then began to understand. The arrogance of the woman was appalling. Did she really believe that she held such a place in her father’s heart that he would ask his own son – his
wife’s
son – to look out for her safety while he was away? And did she really believe Dmitry would do it, even if he had been asked? Who did she think she was?

‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked, almost spitting the words. ‘You think I’m here to make sure you’re all right? Why should my father give a fuck about that?’

Domnikiia looked at him. There was none of the flirtation he had seen in her eyes when they had met in the street not so many months before. She looked confused – surprised too. She scanned his face as if trying to determine if this was some kind of joke. She decided quickly. She turned and walked back towards the house.

‘You’re not the only one, you know,’ Dmitry shouted after her. As far as he knew, she was, but there was little else he could think of that might rile her. It had some effect. She stopped still, then turned slowly and walked back towards him.

‘Dmitry Alekseevich,’ she said softly. ‘There’s no reason for us to be enemies.’

There was nothing suggestive in the tone with which she had spoken, but he chose to make her think he had taken it that way.

‘You’re insatiable,’ he said, attempting to convey disgust.

She smiled, as if at some comment that he had not heard. ‘When it comes to your father, yes I am. He loves you very much, you know.’

It was evident she was not going to rise to his bait. ‘Possibly – but it seems questionable whether he loves his wife.’

‘So who are you angry with?’ she asked. ‘Me or Aleksei?’

‘He loved her before he met you – loved us both. But not every whore that sleeps with a soldier during a war tries to dig her claws in.’

Her eyebrows dipped in the middle as she frowned. Dmitry could not help but note that it made her look even more attractive, but he was not so distracted by it to not also observe her surprise that he knew so much about her past.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I know all about how you found him. Whereabouts was it – that brothel? Near here? How many soldiers did you get through in a night? And did you manage more or less once the French got here?’

Now she seemed genuinely puzzled – not surprisingly. ‘But you were . . . five. How could you know?’ Still there was no anger though.

‘Your other former clients don’t hold you in quite the same esteem as my father does,’ he lied. ‘There’s still stories going round Moscow about Mademoiselle Dominique. You were a fool to give it up – if you did.’

‘I can’t change my past,’ she said.

‘You could change the present,’ said Dmitry. ‘Leave him.’ It certainly wasn’t something he had come here planning to say – he’d had no plan.

‘For you?’ Her smile mocked him.

‘If that would get you away from him.’ He meant it – he thought – as a joke, but it fell flat.

‘How noble,’ she said.

‘I’m sure there are plenty of others you could turn to. You’d only be losing – what – one night a week?’

‘And Aleksei would go running back to your mother – the happy family once again?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my family!’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t think there is. He’s certainly raised you well enough.’

‘What would you know?’

She shrugged. ‘Does Marfa Mihailovna know?’

Dmitry clenched his jaw at the sound of his mother’s name on the whore’s lips. ‘Don’t bring her into this,’ he said coldly.

‘I’ve brought no one into it.’ There was anger in her voice now. ‘You’re the one who’s come to my home; who’s spied on me; who waited till his father was away so that I’d be undefended. Why couldn’t you leave me well alone?’

It was an anger he’d been waiting for, one that allowed him to release his own wrath. He’d hated this woman for years, silently brooding, unable to mention it to his mother – certainly not to his father – sharing it with the only true friend he had in the world. And now she was here, in front of him, and she dared accuse him; accuse him of destroying his family, of being a spy, a coward.

He raised his hand and brought it across her face. She was fast, bringing up her own arm to fend him off. Even then it must have hurt her arm – but at least it saved her looks. How typical of the woman.

‘Would your father do that?’ she asked. She had lost her anger, and had never showed fear. Dmitry lowered his hand. He had no idea of the answer to her question. He tried to place Aleksei in his situation, but he could not make him carry out any action. The worst of it was,
she
seemed to be pretty confident about how his father would behave.

This time he grabbed her wrist with his left hand before lashing his right across her cheek. Her head jerked to one side. She looked up at him, raising her hand to her face and touching the wound. She winced as her fingers made contact, but there were no tears
in her eyes. She looked at her fingertips and saw the blood Dmitry could already see on her lips.

Then she said something that made no sense to him at all.

‘How very like your namesake.’

She turned and headed back into the house.

Dmitry looked back up at the window. The little red-headed girl was standing there looking down on them. Dmitry smiled to himself. With any luck she would tell her parents what she had witnessed, and then they’d have no choice but to fire her nanny.

The chapel of the Winter Palace, in the heart of St Petersburg, was at present as royal a location as any in Russia. Every member of the royal family who could reach it had come to attend a mass that had but one objective – to pray for the life of the one member of that family who beyond all others they wished could be there: His Majesty Tsar Aleksandr I.

Grand Duke Nikolai opened his eyes and, still with his head bowed, glanced around. As family gatherings went, it was not the greatest of turn-outs. The dowager empress, Maria Fyodorovna, was there. It would be a tragedy for her to hear of the death of her eldest son. She was sixty-six years old now, and had lived as a widow for twenty-four of them, as long – inescapably – as her son had reigned. Nikolai was the only one of her sons that was present. Grand Duke Konstantin, the tsarevich, was in Warsaw. It was his duty; he was viceroy, in practice if not in name. But Nikolai suspected it was more than duty that called him there. He shied away from Russia, and from his responsibilities there. He was not suited to take the crown – he was too like their father.

Grand Duke Mihail – youngest of the four sons – was at least returning from that same city, as far as Nikolai understood, but would not arrive for many days. A number of the dowager empress’s grandchildren were there, including his own son, Aleksandr – just seven years old. He felt a surge of pride at the thought the boy would one day be tsar.

He glanced over towards his mother again. Her eyes were
closed and she was deep in prayer. He asked himself the question he had gone over again and again. Did she know the role her own son had played in the death of her husband? Nikolai had not been aware of it for very many years, and even now he could not be sure how much Aleksandr had been told. It was men like Volkonsky who were to blame. Nikolai would never trust him, however he might smile at him when they met. He’d been four at the time of his father’s death – and scarcely a man when he first heard the rumours of what had really happened. Initially he had been shocked, but the more he spoke to those who had been close to power at the time, the more he appreciated how unsuitable Pavel had been for his role. But was that a good enough reason for him to die? Could a tsar not . . . retire?

No, it was ridiculous. He was thinking like his elder brother. More than once Aleksandr had expressed the same wish. But it was a foolish idea. It was not what the Lord had ordained, nor what the people would want. The serfs could not retire and live in their dotage by the sea; what would they think if their tsar could do so? And yet that was effectively what his other brother, Konstantin, had engineered, with Aleksandr’s connivance. He had wed beneath him, and by thus entering into a morganatic marriage, he had voided his right to be tsar, and so the throne would pass to Nikolai, and one day to his son.

Nikolai did not fear the responsibility, but the circumstances of the transition would be difficult. Few outside the inner circle of the royal family knew what arrangements had been made. It would be all very well for Nikolai to declare himself tsar, but until Konstantin returned to Petersburg, there would be those who believed that Nikolai was trying to usurp his brother. Perhaps Nikolai should delay; acclaim Konstantin as tsar and then, once they were together, announce the true succession. The more he considered it, the better an option it seemed.