To Kill A Tsar Part 35

'You have your own sorrow.'

Sophia gave a sad smile and reached down to squeeze Anna's hand.

The following morning, Sophia Perovskaya slipped away from the apartment without saying goodbye. Four days later she was arrested on the Nevsky Prospekt. Then Nikolai Kibalchich was betrayed by his landlady and his friend, Frolenko, was captured at his apartment too.

On the 19th they transferred the body of Alexander II to the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, the fortress's minute gun echoing along the Neva. The river was lined with tens of thousands of onlookers, many from the country, some to mourn, some only to enjoy the spectacle. And as the long cortege of soldiers and civil representatives left the palace the city's bells began to toll, their solemn note reaching into every home and even into the subterranean cells of the Secret House. For the first time in days Anna left the apartment seeking the anonymity of the crowded streets. She dressed in her old brown woollen coat, a little tight now, with Mikhailov's burgundy scarf pulled up over her face. To feel the sharp air in her chest, the crunch of snow underfoot, to find relief in exercise, the stiffness leaving her body, and put the gloom of the last days, the staleness of the apartment behind her. Perhaps it was the freedom she allowed herself in the fresh air to think again of a time when she might be with Frederick that caused her to lower her guard for once. Was it in the Haymarket or on the Nevsky Prospekt? She was never quite sure. But at some point she was seen and followed by a 'pea-green coat', as the party liked to call the police department's spies. He waited until she turned on to the Fontanka Embankment, then grabbed her roughly from behind. 'Thief, thief!' she screamed and managed to break free. She ran into a yard and to the back door of a mansion, but the dvornik had been roused by the commotion and met her on the stairs, driving her from the building. It was only a matter of seconds before they were upon her.

They drove her to Fontanka 16 and then to the studio of Alexandrovsky and Taube on the Nevsky for a police photograph. By the time she returned to the Third Section its corridors were crammed with agents and officials from the justice ministry loitering in the hope of catching a glimpse of another of the regicides. She was taken to the bas.e.m.e.nt and locked in a cell with a guard to watch her at all times. The sergeant in charge of the prisoners refused to listen to her appeal for some privacy to go to the toilet. For an hour or so she sat at the edge of the bench with a dull pain in her chest, resigned to what she had long believed to be inevitable. She tried not to think of her baby. In the early evening a doctor an elderly sober-suited German came to examine her. Again the sergeant refused to remove the guard. She said nothing to the doctor of her pregnancy but after examining her for a few minutes, he placed his stethoscope on her belly. Then he lifted his round brown eyes to her face and gave her a knowing look.

He left without saying anything more than that she was in good health. A short time later the collegiate councillor called Dobrshinsky, whom she knew to be the special investigator, came to inform her that some dignitaries were waiting in his office to see her. He escorted her under guard up the broad marble stairs to the second floor. Then, with more graciousness than she expected, he introduced the two men who were sitting at his desk as the chief prosecutor, Count von Plehve, and General Sereda of the Gendarme Corps. A chair had been set for her in the middle of the room.

'Is it the jealousy of the peasant, Madame Romanko?' von Plehve asked contemptuously, as soon as she had settled. He was fidgeting restlessly with a pen, a high colour in his cheeks. 'Is that why you became a nihilist?'

She stared at him unmoved.

The count was needled by her refusal to reply. 'We have a witness that places you on the embankment he spoke to you only minutes before His Majesty was murdered. It will hang you.'

Again Anna refused to be drawn.

'Your only hope of escaping the gallows is if you help us,' he barked, his elbows on the desk, hands clasped together in a large fist.

Anna noticed the suggestion of a frown on Dobrshinsky's face as if he disapproved of the count's bullying manner. Frederick had spoken of the special investigator with grudging admiration, describing him as a 'subtle Pole'.

But it was General Sereda who spoke next. 'You seem so small. So una.s.suming.' He was quiet and considerate in his address, like an avuncular old priest.

'Were you expecting someone with two heads?' she asked with a wry smile.

'Precious little brain for one,' said von Plehve, breaking in belligerently, 'but a great deal of unruly pa.s.sion.'

The general ignored him. 'What did you hope to achieve? Do you know the tsar signed a draft law to introduce reforms only hours before he died?'

'There is nothing I want to say before my trial,' Anna said, determined not to be drawn into a political discussion.

'Why didn't you have children, Madame Romanko?'

'My name is Anna Kovalenko.'

'If you had had children this would never have happened to you,' the general said with a little shake of the head.

Anna could not help smiling at this strange observation. She sensed that, although the general was hopelessly misguided and old-fashioned, he meant well.

'Enough of this nonsense!' von Plehve bl.u.s.tered. 'Madame Romanko, you will go on trial alongside your comrades in the next few days. The outcome is a foregone conclusion unless you help us.'

Anna frowned but said nothing. What was the point?

'And what of your lover?' he continued, a mean little smile in his eyes. 'Your English doctor. Do you think of him? What a strange hold you have on his imagination. You can help him.'

She flushed a little but did not reply.

'It might be possible for him to go free.'

After a pause, she said: 'Frederick Hadfield has done nothing. He knows nothing.'

But the count was not satisfied and fired questions and threats at her for another ten minutes, working himself into a mighty rage. Finally, he gave up, issuing orders to the guard to take her back to her cell. She a.s.sumed that would be the last she would see of her interrogators until the morning. But two hours later she was woken from a light sleep and escorted back to the office to face the special investigator alone. He offered her something to eat and she accepted some tea.

'But you should eat to keep up your strength,' he said gently. 'Prison food is very insubstantial.'

But she was only interested in the tea. Dobrshinsky summoned a clerk from his outer office and gave him instructions, and a few minutes later he returned with a pot and gla.s.ses and also a little vodka.

'I hope you'll forgive the chief prosecutor's intemperate display, Anna Petrovna,' said Dobrshinsky, pouring her a gla.s.s and pushing it across his desk towards her. 'He does not understand that you and your comrades love Russia and her people as much as we do.'

So reasonable, so plausible, Anna thought; he is as wily as a fox.

'Ah, you smile,' he said. 'But I know your political programme as well as you, and there is much that you ask for that I would support an elected a.s.sembly, freedom of speech and press I share these aspirations too.' He leant across his desk, his small dark eyes not flickering from her face.

'The tsar is dead but where is your revolution? That is not the will of the people at all. They want change, yes, but not violence. Grigory Goldenberg understood this,' he added, 'that is why he was prepared to help me.'

'Poor Grigory was tricked by smooth words and he knew it, and that's why he took his own life,' she said curtly. 'I won't make the same mistake.'

'It's over. The People's Will is finished. It died on the embankment with the tsar. Who of importance is left? Only Vera Figner.' He paused, his eyes scrutinising her face for any sign of weakness or emotion. 'And I am sorry to say Count von Plehve is right your closest comrades will be executed even Sophia Perovskaya.' He noticed her body tense.

'You thought she'd escape because she's a woman and an aristocrat?' Again he paused, staring at her intently for a few seconds more. Then he said: 'But you will not be executed. You will be saved by your baby. Yes, of course I know. Your unborn child is deemed by the law an innocent. But I know, too, what happens in such cases. Your baby will be taken from you when it's born and placed in an orphanage. It will grow up knowing nothing of its mother and father. A Cla.s.s 14 clerk will give your baby a name and an inst.i.tution will be responsible for its wellbeing. Have you visited a city orphanage? Can you imagine your child in such a place?'

Anna felt a sharp, breathless pain as if his white hands were squeezing her heart. She had presumed her baby would have followed her into exile.

'I think it's barbaric,' he added, 'but what I think counts for nothing. I want you to understand the choice you must make is not just for yourself but for your unborn child. What life can your child look forward to in an orphanage?'

She did not answer, her face rigid and white.

'It is a painful choice. Whatever happens, you will go to prison for life. It is possible, if you help me, that I may be able to arrange for your child to be given to your family, or even Dr Hadfield's. Then it would know of its mother and father and know love . . .'

It was as if he was talking to her from a great distance, the subtle sibilant hiss of the snake in the garden. What was she prepared to risk for her child? How could they threaten to separate a child from its mother? She wanted to release the pain, to scream, to throw her tea gla.s.s against the wall.

'. . . you must have time to think . . .' He was still speaking to her. 'It is a choice you make for your child. What is most important to you?'

44.

For many days Hadfield saw only the warders and a doctor who stubbornly refused to say more than he deemed professionally necessary. The beating had left him with superficial injuries, but fearful the bruises would precipitate a scandal, the governor of the Preliminary had placed him under close medical supervision.

For half an hour each day, he shuffled in silence round the edge of the frozen exercise yard with the other inmates. He listened to messages painstakingly tapped on the pipes and memorised the names of 'politicals' from every corner of the empire and the distinctive c.h.i.n.king rhythm of their spoons. It was from one of these he learnt of Sophia Perovskaya's arrest.

'Is there word of Anna Kovalenko?' he tapped slowly on his own pipe. No one had news of her. But after that he asked the question every day.

It was the powerlessness he found most oppressive. His fate in the hands of others, and even the smallest details of his life determined without reference to him. Finally, in his third week of captivity, he received a visitor.

His Excellency General Glen was standing by the mantelpiece in the governor's office, resplendent in the Finance Ministry uniform, the gold and silver stars on his coat twinkling in the light of a lively fire. The governor was at his side but withdrew with a respectful nod of the head.

Hadfield stood in the middle of the rug, conscious of the sorry figure he cut in his prison greys, his hand clutching the top of his trousers. General Glen did not move from the fire, pity and contempt written in the lines of his face. Only when the door closed quietly behind the governor did he speak.

'What have they done to you?'

'This?' asked Hadfield, touching the yellow bruises on his cheek and about his eyes. 'It's not as bad as it appears.'

'Pity. d.a.m.n it, you deserve it.'

They stood gazing at each other in awkward silence. Hadfield wanted to say he was sorry but he was sure it would be like lighting a blue touchpaper.

But an apology was what the general was waiting to hear. 'What do you say for yourself, sir?'

'That I deeply regret the pain and the embarra.s.sment I have caused you and my aunt after all the kindness you have shown me.'

'But why, sir? Why?' The muscles in the general's face were twitching as he fought to hold his anger in check. 'You've disappointed everyone. The amba.s.sador, the British government . . . Lord Dufferin was obliged to a.s.sure the emperor that no one at the emba.s.sy had the slightest inkling you were involved with these people, this woman . . . and I have had to apologise to His Majesty. Lady Dufferin feels you betrayed her trust. We all do. Explain yourself, sir.'

Hadfield took a deep breath, as if collecting his thoughts, but there was nothing he wished to say. He could not speak of his feelings. There was no need. A ferocious diatribe burst from his uncle like warm champagne from a bottle: the disgrace his nephew had brought upon him, his aunt's pain and the disappointment of his cousin Alexandra. 'And your mother. Did you think of her? How could you allow yourself to be deceived by this Romanko woman?'

'Do you know if she is still-'

'Your mistress is not my concern.'

'Don't call her that.'

General Glen looked away for a few seconds, his face puce, hands balled, as if struggling to contain an urge to punch his nephew. 'My only concern is that we avoid a public trial,' he said at last. 'We're going to have to dress this up as an unfortunate affair of the heart, of course, a dangerous infatuation.'

'Of course.'

General Glen took a menacing step closer: 'd.a.m.n fool. I'm only doing this for your mother and your aunt's sake.'

'I'm sorry.'

'You have your aunt and cousin to thank for my presence here today.'

Hadfield nodded. 'Please give them my-'

'There is no reason to be optimistic,' said the general, cutting across him impatiently. 'The Ministry of Justice is pressing for trial and an exemplary sentence. You are fortunate Lord Dufferin is still willing to speak on your behalf as a British subject.'

'Yes. Thank you.'

'I don't want your thanks, sir. I want to see the back of you.' He stared at Hadfield for a moment, then walked over to the governor's desk and sat down. 'Who was responsible for those?' he asked, pointing at Hadfield's face.

'An officer of the Gendarme Corps.'

The general listened to a description of the attack with his head bent, turning the signet ring on his right hand distractedly, interrupting only once to check and make a note of Barclay's name.

'Not the behaviour of a proper gentleman,' he observed dryly when his nephew had finished. 'But he may have unwittingly done you a good turn. And this fellow Dobrshinsky?'

'I haven't seen him for two or three weeks.'

'Did he strike you? Is there anything I should know about his conduct?'

For a fleeting moment, an image of the special investigator's pallid face, his small brown eyes and trembling hands, flitted through Hadfield's mind. He dismissed the thought at once.

'Nothing? d.a.m.n fellow,' said General Glen, rising from his chair. 'It was his job to prevent this whole sorry business.' There the interview ended, cold, businesslike, without affection and with the presumption their paths would not cross again.

Within a few days the emptiness of the prison filled his mind once more. The only relief came with the patient tapping of the pipes. More arrests, and there was to be a trial in the court building next to the prison. One of the warders was unable to contain his excitement.

'Tomorrow. They're here in the prison already. I've been to take a look at Zhelyabov. Is it true he was sleeping with the aristocrat?' But he knew nothing of a Kovalenko or a Romanko.

Hadfield heard his first word of Anna the following morning as the courtroom was beginning to fill. Clink, clink, clink. A frenzy of tapping and a bittersweet message for the doctor: 'Anna sends love.'

On his knees, spoon in hand: 'Where is Anna?'

He heard his question pa.s.sed down the pipe by his neighbour. Half an hour later there was a reply: 'Here.'

Unable to contain his disappointment, he jumped to his feet, pacing, spinning in his tiny cell, struggling to hold in check an urge to shout, bellow, beat on the door. Oh G.o.d. What now? Trapped, helpless, there was nothing he could do but tell her he loved her too. Sinking back to his knees, he c.h.i.n.ked it on the pipe, over, and over and over.

After that he fretted about Anna and their baby constantly, searching every few hours for an excuse to send her a message by the prison telegraph. But there was no reply. He lay for hours on his bed, churning the same fears over and over until he reached the pitch of misery beyond which only madness lay. Once he dreamt he pa.s.sed invisible through his door on to the landing and was drawn by fairy tale light to her cell where, to his surprise, the ceiling seemed to dissolve into a starry night sky, and he bent beneath it to kiss her tenderly. But a door clanged shut on the landing below, resounding in the well and forcing him back to the complete darkness of his own cell.

The trial lasted only three days, the verdict never in doubt.

'Were you a friend of Sophia Perovskaya's, Doctor?' One of the younger warders asked at breakfast one morning.

'An acquaintance.'

'They say she's the only one who may escape. The emperor would have to confirm her sentence personally because she's n.o.bility.'

But the new tsar was not inclined to show clemency. No exceptions would be made for s.e.x or birth and the sentences were confirmed on all five of the regicides. The news travelled along the pipes to every corner of the prison and, when everyone knew, there was silence. Even the warders seemed to step more lightly on the iron stairs. In his mind's eye Hadfield could see Anna curled in misery, with thoughts of the ordeal her comrades must face, and his heart ached for her and with the fear that one day the same harsh justice might be meted out to her too. In desperation he sought the governor's permission to write to his uncle and to the emba.s.sy. He would acknowledge his unborn child and request it be given the protection any British subject was ent.i.tled to. For a day he heard nothing. Then he received word the governor was seeking guidance. And, on the eve of the executions, a visit at last.

'But who were you expecting, Doctor?' asked Dobrshinsky. He paused for a few seconds, his eyebrows raised in a quizzical expression: 'Your uncle again? You know, he has done you great service. Sit down, please.'

Hadfield did as he was bidden.

'First let me apologise for Major Barclay's behaviour. He was overwrought but that is not to excuse him. He was most ungentlemanly.'

'Yes.'

'I have just visited the condemned cells. You know the regicides are to be executed in the morning?' The special investigator's voice was reflective, his eyes fixed for a moment on the middle distance. There was the same sickly pallor in his cheeks, his skin drawn tighter across the bone.

'Have you tried to imagine how you would behave if you were the condemned man?' Again the curious cold tight-lipped smile. 'Or woman?'

'Is it possible to imagine?'