The Jewel of St Petersburg (2 page)

Her feet were bare. She’d kicked off her shoes after the long gallop up the slope through the fields. The sky was still dark when she’d crept out of bed. She’d ignored the hairpins and the buckles, the gloves and the hat, all the paraphernalia that her mother insisted a young lady must wear at all times outdoors. At seventeen, she was old enough now to make her own choices. So she’d pulled a light sleeveless dress over her head, sneaked out of the house, saddled up Dasha and come up here to her favorite spot on her father’s country estate. She’d plunged into the dark somber fringe of the forest from where she loved to watch the dawn rise over Tesovo.

Her bare toes relished the black earth, moist as treacle. The wind had whipped her long dark hair in a fan across her cheeks and twined it around her neck. There was a freedom up here that loosened something inside her, something that had been wound too tight. It was always the same when the family left St. Petersburg and arrived in Tesovo for the drowsy months of summer and the long white nights when the sun scarcely bothered to drop below the horizon.

That was until she saw the rifles.

Men in hoods. All in black and moving with stealth through the shadowy world of the forest. Sweat pooled in the hollow of her back as she dodged behind a tree. She heard a murmur of blurred voices, nothing more, and for a while she waited, willing them to leave. But only when the crimson dawn drew a line like a trail of blood between the trees did the men suddenly spread out, vanishing completely, and Valentina felt her heart thump in panic.

A whisper? Was that a whisper behind her?

She spun around. Peered into the shadows but could see no one.

A moment later a shape flicked. Dark and quick, off to one side. Another directly ahead. They were circling her. How many? She sank down into the dense mist that rose from the ground and, crouching low, she started to run through the thick undergrowth. Thin gray ropes of mist coiled around her ankles and fronds reached for her face, but she didn’t stop until she almost crashed into a pair of legs crossing an animal trail in front of her. She froze. In her leafy cavern under the ferns on the forest floor she didn’t breathe. The legs paused, her terrified gaze fixed on a cloth patch that was badly sewn on the knee of the trousers, but then they moved on. She jinked to her left and scuttled farther. If she could find the edge of the forest where her horse was tethered, she could...

The blow came from nowhere. Knocked her flat on her back. She lay sprawled on the damp earth but struck out at the hand that seized her shoulder, sinking teeth into its wrist. Bone jarred on her teeth but she bit harder and tasted blood. The hand abruptly released its grip with a curse and she bounded to her feet, but a heavy swinging slap cracked against her jaw and sent her crashing into a tree, cheek first.

“She’s over here!” a deep voice yelled.

Valentina tried to run. Her head was spinning but she saw the second slap coming and dropped to one knee. She heard her attacker’s hand snap as it smacked into the trunk instead and a bellow of rage. Her feet were up and running, but the earth wouldn’t keep still. It was swaying under her, merging with the gray mist and flaring into flames each time she crossed a streak of sunlight.

“Stop her!”

“Shit!
Dermo!
Put a bullet in her.”

A bullet?

The sound of a bullet rattling into the breech of a rifle ripped into her mind. She jerked behind a tree and saw her hands quivering uncontrollably on the peeling bark.

“Wait!” she called out.

Silence. The noise of bodies crashing through the forest ceased.

“Wait!” she called again.

“Get out here where we can see you.”

“No bullets?”

A voice laughed at her, an angry sound. “No bullets.”

They hadn’t fired at her yet. Maybe they couldn’t risk the noise of shots. In the countryside sound travels far. She tried to swallow, but her throat was raw. These men weren’t playing games. Whatever it was they were doing, she had disturbed them at it and they weren’t going to let her just walk away. She had to talk to them.

“Hurry up!
Bistro!”
the angry voice shouted.

Valentina’s heart stopped in her chest as she stepped clear of the tree.

T
HERE WERE FIVE OF THEM. FIVE MEN, FIVE RIFLES. ONLY one, the tallest figure, had his rifle slung loosely over his shoulder as if he didn’t expect to use it. The black masked faces stared blankly back at her, and her skin crawled at the sight of them.

They didn’t put a bullet in her. That was a start.

“It’s just a girl,” one scoffed.

“Quick as a bloody rabbit, though.”

Three of them moved nearer. She tensed, up on her toes, ready to run.

“Don’t look so fierce, girl, we’re just...”

“Get away from me.”

“No need to be unfriendly.”

“You’re trespassing on my father’s land,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound like hers.

“The land of Russia,” one of the hoods growled, “belongs to the people of Russia. You stole it from us.”

Chyort!
Revolutionaries. The word swelled in her head, crushing all other thoughts. Stories circulated throughout the salons of St. Petersburg about men like this, about how they intended to seize control of Russia and kill off all the ruling classes. She would be just the beginning.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

A loose lecherous chuckle came from the one closest to her. “Enjoying the view.”

She felt her cheeks flush. Her thin muslin dress was plastered to her body where sweat and sodden foliage had streaked the material. Defensively she looped her arms in front of her but shook her hair back from her face in a gesture of defiance. The three loomed closer, and one moved behind her to cut off her retreat. Caging her. She breathed warily. She couldn’t see their faces behind their black hoods, but she could tell by the speed of their rangy limbs and the eagerness in their voices that they were young. The other two men seemed slightly older, more solidly built, and kept themselves farther away across the break in the trees, murmuring to each other in low tones. She couldn’t tell from their masks whether they watched her, but the taller of them was clearly the one in authority.

Why were they here in Tesovo? What were they planning? She had to get away, had to warn her father. But two of the young men started shouldering each other, jostling like jackals for the spoils.

“Who are you?” she asked, to shift their thoughts from herself.

“We are the true voice of Russia.”

“If that’s so, your voices should be heard in the Duma, our parliament, not by me in a forest clearing. What use is that?”

“I can think of one use,” the stockiest of the three responded. He touched her breast with the tip of his rifle.

She knocked it fiercely to one side. “You may claim the land,” she hissed, “but don’t think you can claim me.”

His two companions burst out into coarse laughter, but he yanked his belt from his waist and wound one end around his fist, swinging the buckle threateningly. “Bitch!
Suka!”

Valentina’s heart slid into her throat. She could smell his anger on him, sour in the fresh morning air.

“Please.” She addressed the tall man among the trees. There was a stillness about him that frightened her even more than the unfocused energy of his men. “Please,” she said, “control them.”

The man stared back at her from within the dark folds of his hood, slowly shook his head, and walked away into the forest. For a moment she panicked and her hands clenched together to stop them shaking. Yet it seemed that he’d left instructions because the man to whom he’d been talking pointed abruptly to the one standing behind her.

“You,” he said. “Deal with her. The rest of you, follow me.”

Deal with her.

They were well trained, she’d give them that. The angry one with his belt in his fist strutted away at once with no comment, the other alongside him. Behind her the solitary figure shifted his rifle purposefully and shuffled his homemade boots in the damp earth.

“Sit,” he ordered.

She thought about it.

“Sit,” he said again, “or I will make you.”

She sat.

A
N HOUR PASSED, MAYBE MORE. VALENTINA LOST TRACK OF time. Her limbs ached and her head cramped. Each time she attempted to move or to speak, her guard made a sound of disgust behind her and jammed the metal tip of his rifle into whichever part of her anatomy took his fancy: her ribs, her shoulder, an arm. Worst was the nape of her neck.

But he didn’t shoot her. She clung to that faint thread of hope.

What were the others doing? The question ricocheted around inside her skull, splitting her thoughts into a thousand answers.

They could be thieves. She hoped so fiercely that they were here to rob her father’s house that she almost convinced herself it was true. Here to steal the antique paintings, the gold statues, the Oriental carvings, her mother’s jewels. It had been tried before, so why not again? But what thieves would wait till daylight? What thieves were stupid enough to rob a house when the servants were up and about?

She pulled her knees to her chest. Sank her chin on them and in return received a prod in the spine from the rifle, but behind her heels she’d dragged a stone to within reach. She wrapped her arms around her shins and shivered in the breeze that was thinning the mist. Not that it was cold, but she was frightened. Frightened for her parents and for her sister, Katya, who would be rising from their beds about now, totally unaware of the black hoods that stalked Tesovo. Katya was only thirteen, a blond bubble of energy who would come bounding into Valentina’s room to entreat her for a swim in the creek after breakfast on their first morning at Tesovo. Mama liked to keep to her room first thing in the morning, but Papa was a stickler for punctuality at breakfast. He would be ruffling his whiskers and glaring at his pocket watch because his elder daughter was late.

Papa, be careful.

“Are you Bolsheviks?” she asked suddenly, tensing herself for the blow.

It came. On the neck. She heard something crunch.

“Are you?” she asked again. She wished she could turn and look into his hooded face.

“Shut your mouth.”

The second blow was harder, but at least he had spoken. It was the first time she’d heard his voice since he’d ordered her to sit. She wasn’t certain how far behind her he was crouched, silent as a spider, except that it was obviously less than a rifle length away. She’d been submissive so long, he must have dropped his guard by now, surely. If she was wrong... She didn’t care to think about that. She needed to lure him within reach.

“You know who my father is?”

The rifle slammed into the side of her jaw, jerking her head almost off her neck. “Of course I bloody know. You think we’re stupid peasants or something?”

“He is General Nicholai Ivanov, a trusted minister in Tsar Nicholas’s government. He could help you and your friends to—”

This time he thrust the tip of his rifle against the back of her head, forcing it forward till her forehead was jammed against her knees.

“Your kind is finished,” he hissed at her, and she could feel his breath hot on the bruised skin of her neck. “We’ll trample you bastards into the earth that you stole from us. We’re sick of being kicked and starved while you stuff your greedy faces with caviar. Your father is a fucking tyrant and he’s going to pay for—”

Her hand closed on the stone hidden under her skirt. With a violent twist she spun around and slammed it into the front of the hood. Something broke. He screamed. High-pitched, the way a fox screams. But she was too quick, gone before he could pull the trigger. Racing, ducking, dodging under branches and plunging into the darkest shadows while his cry fluttered behind her. She could hear him charging through the foliage and two shots rang out, but both whistled past harmlessly, raking the leaves and snapping off twigs as she stretched the distance between them.

She slid down a slope on her heels, desperate to find the river. It was her route out of the forest. She swerved and switched direction till she was certain she had lost her pursuer, and then she stopped and listened. At first she could hear nothing except her pulse in her ears, but gradually another sound trickled through: the faint but unmistakable ripple of water over rocks. Relief hit her and to her dismay she felt her knees buckle under her. She was stunned to find herself sitting upright on the damp earth, fretful and weak as a kitten. She forced herself shakily back onto her feet. She had to warn her father.