Midnight in St. Petersburg (30 page)

Madame Leman read it out loud. ‘“This morning at six o'clock, Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin passed away suddenly at one of the most aristocratic houses in the centre of Petrograd after a party.”'

All Horace was aware of, in that first moment, was Inna closing her eyes. She was swaying slightly on her feet.

‘It's true, then,' Horace said, putting an arm round her waist, surprised by how dejected he felt. ‘The rumour I heard about Youssoupoff and his friends. They've done it.' He shivered. How utterly pointless. Rationally, he knew that the killers would have simply fallen into the Russian error of refusing to believe their all-powerful Emperor could be ruling them wrongly, and so blaming those around him instead. Horace had always laughed at that over-deferential frame of mind, encapsulated in the Russian saying: ‘good Tsar, bad advisers'. Killing Rasputin would make his assassins feel better, Horace thought, but it wouldn't change the way the Emperor reigned over Russia, or make the generals efficient, or stop the Empress wreaking havoc. It would do no good.

In that newspaper snippet, Horace also heard an entire millennium of reverence for simple religious men of Grigory Rasputin's type shiver and shrivel to dust. This killing signalled the end for a land which, since time immemorial, had defined itself as Holy Rus and had been crisscrossed by those bearded men of God with innocent peasant eyes; the schismatic Christs, the superstitious pilgrims in their dusty bast shoes, the wandering
stranniki,
the otherworldly
yurodiviye,
the hermits and holy beggars and simpletons …

And what effect would this murder have on the other Russia,
his
glittering urban Russia, this home from home he'd made for himself among the artists and princesses and sophisticates in this extravagant place where Easter eggs were made of gold?

Horace sighed, trying to hope Youssoupoff
wasn't
involved.

‘What heroes,' Marcus said ironically into the silence, quoting the favourite lines of the right-wing press: ‘“Saving Russia from Rasputin. Saving us all from
rivailooshun
.”'

‘They've destroyed him, then, those aristos,' Madame Leman said. ‘He wasn't a bad man, you know, not until they got their hands on him. He was a man of the soil, once, a man of God. I saw that myself, in his eyes.' Her voice rose in the shrill lament of the bread queues against the powers that be. ‘And what I want to know now is, what's to become of us all if
they
feel free to just go round exterminating people as the fancy takes them, putting them down like dogs – who's going to save Russia from
them
?'

She sounded ready to go and man a barricade herself, Horace thought. How many other respectable ladies would also react like this when they found out that the wealthiest young men in the land were just a pack of murderers?

‘Mam,' Barbarian said warningly, looking full of adolescent embarrassment. Marcus, in turn, gave his younger brother a quelling look.

In the silence that fell again, Horace noticed Inna blinking and curling the fingers of both hands in against her palms, making loose fists. Touching her scars. She used to do that, he remembered, to give her courage.

He waited for her to say something – anything – about the previous night.

But she kept quiet.

*   *   *

There were a lot of people gesticulating excitedly to each other on Nevsky, and a lot of newspapers being pored over as they walked home. Horace heard faint hoorahs coming from the inside of a smart café. The story was clearly out.

Inna held on to him, clutching his coat as if she needed support to stay upright.

‘Did you hear anything, in the night?' he asked her finally. ‘At the palace?'

A quiver of uncertainty went through her.

‘I don't know,' she whispered at last. ‘Maybe.'

He looked down at her, raising an enquiring eyebrow.

‘I mean, I heard some cars, some people in the street, a bit of shouting.'

Horace became aware that a tear was coursing slowly down her cheek. Then more. She didn't do anything to wipe them away.

‘He still talked like a countryman, you know, all slow and gentle,' she said. ‘Poor Father Grigory. You know, he still had goodness in his eyes…'

It was natural for her to sound so fond of him, Horace told himself. She'd met him when she first came to the city, after all, and it was at Rasputin's home that the two of them had met, too. At that, Horace had a sudden clear memory of Inna on that day: so young, still, with no idea yet of how beautiful she was or why all the other people in the room were looking at her, with her angular stillness and heartbreakingly brittle poise and big, scared, watchful eyes. And yet, even as he felt this long-ago memory warm him, he was also starting to wonder, with the beginning of fear, how well she had actually known Rasputin, both back then and later. Yet he didn't like to ask. Instead he put his arm around her waist and they walked on.

In the long silence that followed, with nothing but the sound of her footsteps to distract him, Horace went back to the anxious thought that had been bothering him since before they'd left the workshop.

It was about his pay. He'd worked out weeks ago that his commission for the Youssoupoff order would be enough to pay a three-month block of rent, as well as an expense Inna didn't know he had promised to cover, the school fees for next term for Barbarian and Agrippina. The Lemans couldn't keep themselves afloat without him. Everyone needed him to be earning well. Probably nothing would happen to young Youssoupoff – if he were the killer – as a result of this escapade, as Russia wasn't a place where the mighty could easily be punished. But Horace needed to be paid for the boxes before things went further, just in case.

‘I'll take you up and settle you in,' he said, once they'd reached Great Cavalry Street and paused for breath in their courtyard. He was digging in his pocket for his keys. ‘But then I need to go out for an hour or two.'

She turned hurt eyes on him. ‘Now? Why?'

‘To drop something off with a client,' Horace said vaguely.

‘With who?' But she already knew. He could see it from the accusation in her eyes.

He hesitated. ‘Youssoupoff. I need to collect payment for those boxes I'm painting for him.'

She didn't reply. But he was aware of the ominous nature of her silence, and of the way she held herself so as to avoid his touch as they walked upstairs. She took off her outdoor clothes as soon as she was through the front door, then stalked into the drawing room and buried herself up to the neck in one of the hillocks of silky quilts and pastel-coloured cushions she was so given to piling up on sofas everywhere, as if making them into fortifications against him. Horace didn't bother taking off his boots or hat, but, hoping she wasn't as angry as she seemed to be, went to his desk for his briefcase.

‘I'm sorry about the floor,' he said, turning back and seeing that he'd left a trail of footprints of melting black snow right across the parquet.

She didn't reply. She was staring at the far corner of the room, but her chin was up, and her lips pinched tight.

Well, there was nothing for it but to go. Briefcase in hand, he began to step carefully back through his slushy traces towards the front door.

Her voice, when it came, was like a whiplash.

‘I can't believe you're really going to that murderer's house – now.'

Horace stopped. She was looking straight at him, at last, and her eyes were harder and colder than emeralds.

He lifted his shoulders, Faced with that contemptuous gaze, he didn't know how to explain.

‘How could you even think of it?' she pursued. ‘How could you sink so low?'

Horace barely recognized the hot white feeling that lifted him on his feet and speeded up his heartbeat. ‘Look,' he said, very quickly. ‘We don't even really know what's happened yet. When has anyone ever been able to trust anything they hear in this town? And we need the money. I have to go.'

There was an answering flash of green from above the quilts.

‘Well, let me tell you something,' she said harshly. ‘There's more to life than money-grubbing—' Her voice was getting louder and crueller.

‘Let
me
tell
you
something,' Horace broke in, outraged by the injustice of what she'd said, but still trying to keep his voice under control, to steer them back towards compromise. ‘If I went about refusing to take payment from anyone in this town whom I thought less than perfectly moral, we'd both starve in no time, and so would the Lemans, children and all. You must know that.'

‘—at least there is for anyone with any sort of claim to integrity.' Her voice topped his, furiously, as she sat up so straight under her quilts that a few satiny cushions slithered unnoticed to the floor. ‘You'd know that yourself if you believed in anything, or stood for anything.'

Even after he'd gone back out into the treacherous sharpness of the evening winds, he couldn't get the sick dark look she'd given him as he'd turned away out of his head.

He wanted to hurry. But he hadn't reckoned on the tyranny of winter. Once there's snow-covered ice on the streets, there's no more running. To avoid slipping and breaking a limb, you have to remember to put each foot down carefully, with your weight directly above, shuffling like an invalid learning to walk. So Horace's haste had to take clumping, laboured form, puffing out white clouds as he stomped into the wind, ignoring the joyless wartime shop fronts and crowds of frostbitten beggars. He cursed his cautious feet and the gleaming black threat under the churned-up snow.

He could be back in an hour if he was lucky. Fifteen minutes to the shop, to pick up the box. Fifteen minutes to the palace on the Moika. Fifteen minutes for presenting his compliments and taking the money. Fifteen minutes home.

But Felix Youssoupoff was not at home.

Horace was admitted to the palace all the same. He looked around at the marble floors and chandeliers, the servants in national dress. Everything seemed reassuringly as usual in Felix's part of the palace.

‘He's spending a few days with his father-in-law, your excellency,' the Tatar butler explained impassively, taking receipt of the box and handing Horace an envelope containing his payment. Once Horace had counted out the notes they both signed the household book to prove payment had been made.

Horace half wanted to ask what had happened last night, and whether Rasputin had been here. He knew the butler a little, after all. But his nerve failed him. What if the man said yes?

On the way home, relieved to be able to finger that warm, dry paper in his pocket, Horace, feeling calmer, didn't risk his neck on the snow by even trying to hurry. There was no point. Inna would be asleep by the time he got there.

She wasn't.

She was lying in bed. But the lamp was on, and she turned red-rimmed, accusing eyes on him as soon as he entered.

‘I hate to think of you touching that man's money,' she said.

He only grunted, and went into his dressing room. As he hung up his jacket, he was thinking: How can she have any idea of the kind of people who come into Fabergé's these days to spend the money they're making from the war? How can she have any idea of the financial reality confronting us all? He wanted her to feel loved, protected. And if her harsh words were the price, well, then he'd just have to bear it. Her coldness would pass.

But when he came out and lay down next to her, she didn't roll towards him and entwine her body with his. They slept turned away from each other, huddling on opposite sides of the bed.

*   *   *

The chill in the Wallicks' bed in the apartment on Great Cavalry Street persisted through the between-worlds weeks that followed – both of them going to work as usual in the morning (though Inna didn't go to the hospital the following Friday, or ever again), and plodding home again in the evening, and eating, and talking perfectly amiably until bedtime about this and that, but, at night, pulling apart and huddling far away from each other under the covers. It felt strange to them both, but neither was willing to break the silence and talk about something that felt so full of danger to them both.

Everyone in town had learned the truth about that Friday night once Father Grigory's corpse, dumped over the rotting wooden bridge to Krestovsky Island at dawn, was finally fished up, frozen solid, but with head and upper body horribly battered, one eye almost out of its socket, stab wounds to the arms, deep rope-marks on the wrists, a bullet wound to the head, two more in the back, and God knows what other damage that would now never come to light, because the Empress, who couldn't bear the idea of an inquest being performed on her holy man, had stopped it midway with the words, ‘Just leave the body of Father Grigory in peace.'

The Wallicks kept their distance from each other while the princely assassins jaunted around town for a few days, to standing ovations at the opera and cheers in officers' barracks everywhere, and their exalted families pleaded with the Tsar to pardon them. They were sent into exile anyway, when the sovereign angrily refused, and the imperial family broke into quarrelling factions.

Inna and Horace went on sleeping as far as possible from each other, despite the brutal cold that gripped the city as Christmas came, even after the muted celebratory meal at the Lemans'. (The family tried to make merry over cabbage soup and meat patties and the last of the bottled mushrooms and summer berries, along with an old bottle of brandy: the only things Madame Leman, for all her standing in line, had managed to muster for the table.)

Not everything changed. They even dressed up one evening towards the end of February and went together to the première of
Masquerade
, the great glittering Meyerhold production that
le tout Pétersbourg
had been waiting for through years of rehearsal (Horace was good at getting tickets).