Russka

Catherine

1786

Alexander Bobrov sat at his desk and stared at the two pieces of paper in front of him. One was covered with figures scribbled in his own hand; the other was a letter that had been brought there by a liveried servant just half an hour before. As he looked at them now, he shook his head in puzzlement, then murmured: ‘What the devil can I do?’

Outside the College, as the ministries were called, it was already dark for during December there were only five and a half hours of daylight in St Petersburg. Most people had gone home: the Russians normally dined at two but it was not unusual for Bobrov to be in his office this late, since he often dined in the fashionable English quarter, where they liked to eat at five.

The icy wind in the street outside could not be heard because, like every house in St Petersburg, the College’s double windows had been put up in October and every interstice was caulked tight.

For months, Bobrov had been playing the most difficult and dangerous game of his life; and now, when the prize was in sight, he could hardly believe what had happened. For one sheet of paper was a tally of his debts; and the other was an offer of marriage. In fact, it was a demand.

‘Yet surely,’ he murmured again, ‘there must be a way out.’

At this moment, he could think of only one.

With a sigh he pushed the papers away from him and then called to the ante-room beyond. Immediately, a respectful young man appeared, dressed in a light blue coat with yellow buttons and white knee-breeches – the uniform of the St Petersburg government.

‘Tell the lackey to find my coachman. I’m leaving.’

‘At once, Your Highly Born.’ The young man disappeared.

Your Highly Born. This honorific referred not to Bobrov’s ancestry, noble though it was, but to the fact that he had already, though only in his early thirties, reached the dizzy height of fifth rank in the fourteen service ranks established by Peter the Great. Nobility could be achieved by service. Lower ranks were only addressed as Well Born; then Highly Well Born; then Highly Born. If Bobrov continued his brilliant career, he might hope to reach the final and most coveted appellation of all: Your Highest Excellency.

Alexander Prokofievich Bobrov was a good-looking man of above average height. He had a rather round, cleanshaven face with a broad forehead, slightly hooded brown eyes and a thin mouth which, when it moved, might have looked sensual if he did not disguise it with a faint, ironic twist. His hair, in the fashion of that decade, was powdered and arranged like a wig, with a single curl over each ear produced with heated tongs every morning. His frock coat was of plain cloth: tight-fitting, knee-length and of an English cut. His waistcoat was embroidered, his breeches white with a blue stripe. In short, he was dressed in the best European fashion of the day.

It was hard to guess this character from this carefully controlled exterior. Seen in profile, his face assumed a slightly Turkish look and the long, hooked nose was noticeable: was there, in this refined face, a hint of cruelty? But then, in company, seeing him unconsciously making that gentle caressing motion with his arm towards some person he was talking to, it was impossible to believe he could be harsh.

In the golden era of Catherine the Great, in the gracious city of St Petersburg, there was no more accomplished gambler than Alexander Prokofievich Bobrov. He did not gamble for money. Though he would often be seen at the card tables in the best houses, he only played for pin money. ‘Only fools or rogues try to make their fortunes at cards,’ he would observe; and he was neither. Bobrov the gambler was interested in a greater and more secret game: he was gambling for power. Or perhaps something even more. ‘Alexander,’ a shrewd acquaintance once remarked, ‘is playing at cards with God.’ Up to now he had been winning.

Yet he had worked for his success too. My God, he had tried! He might so easily have been a nonentity, like any other provincial noble of his day. As a child on one of the family estates near Tula, his education had consisted of little more than reading from the Orthodox Psalter and learning fairy tales and Russian songs from the serfs. And so he might have continued, but for one stroke of luck. For when he was ten, a friend of his father’s, apparently on a whim, had taken a fancy to him and invited him to live in Moscow and share tutors with his children. That had been his break – and it was all he had needed.

‘From then on,’ he recalled proudly, ‘I did everything myself.’ He had worked like a demon, amazing his teachers. Though only a boy, he had recommended himself to people at Moscow University and others with influence. Somehow he had been chosen for the elite corps of pages at the St Petersburg court; and while most of those young men gambled, drank and made love, he had studied as hard as ever until – the greatest triumph of all – he had been one of a handful of youths chosen to be sent to the great German University of Leipzig. What some thought of as effortless superiority was nothing of the kind. I paid with my youth, he would reflect.

And what drove him forward? Ambition: he owed all his success to ambition, but it was a cruel master. It drove you forward, but if you faltered, if you met an obstacle that stopped you, it leapt like a huge fiend on to your back, first screaming abuse, and then weighing down on you like a mountain, crushing the life out of you. Yet strangely, it also gave Alexander Bobrov a kind of purity. Whatever he did, however deviously he played his cards, it was all in the service of this single, secret idea that drove him on.

Yet what exactly was it that he wanted? Like most ambitious men, Bobrov did not really know. It had no name. The whole world, perhaps; or heaven; or both, more likely. He even wanted to be a benefactor of mankind, one day.

But that December evening, there was a more urgent question on his mind as he looked again at the sheet of paper covered with figures and shook his head. He had known he was in trouble for a long time, but he had tried to put off the reckoning. Now it had come.

For Alexander Bobrov was completely ruined.

He had been luckier than many, he was the first to admit it. Despite subdivisions over the generations, his father had still left him three estates: the one near Tula; another on the rich land south of the Oka, in the province of Riazan; and one at Russka, south of Vladimir. There were also part shares in two others. In all, Alexander owned five hundred souls – as the adult male serfs were termed. Not a great fortune nowadays, for the population had been growing that century, but still a good inheritance. It was not enough, though.

‘Half the men I know are in debt,’ he used to say cheerfully. It was quite true – rich and poor noble alike. The authorities were very understanding: they had even set up a special bank to lend – to the gentry only, of course – on easy terms. And since a noble’s wealth was reckoned by the number of serfs he owned, the collateral for these loans was expressed not in terms of roubles, but in souls. Thank God, that very year, the credit limit had been raised from twenty to forty roubles per soul. That had kept him afloat for the last few months. But the fact was, the Tula estate where he grew up had had to be sold, all his remaining three hundred souls were mortgaged, and God knew what he owed to merchants.

The final blow had come that morning, when his major domo had asked for money to buy provisions in the market and Bobrov had discovered he had none. He had told the fellow to use his own, then paid a visit to his bank. To his astonishment, they had refused to advance him any more cash. It was iniquitous! On reaching his office he had forced himself to do his accounts and discovered to his horror that the interest he owed was far greater than his income! There was no question: he was bankrupt. The game was up. ‘It’s no good,’ he sighed, ‘I can’t play this hand any more.’

And now he turned again to the letter. The way to safety: marriage to the German girl. How the devil could he get out of it?

He had been married once before, long ago. His bride had died in childbirth after only a year and he had been heartbroken. But that was far in the past and he had not married again. Instead, he had a charming mistress. In fact, the German girl had been only one of several desultory courtships he had begun in recent years, as a kind of insurance policy. Her family belonged to the Baltic nobility – descendants of the ancient Teutonic Knights – some of whom had taken service in Russia after Peter the Great had annexed their hereditary Baltic lands. She was fifteen; and the trouble was, she had fallen desperately in love with him – for which he should have been grateful since she was an heiress. Her name was Tatiana.

All that year, the innocent girl had been putting pressure on her father to conclude the matter. As weeks and months had passed, and Bobrov himself had become increasingly uncertain of his finances, he had been forced to become further and further committed. For if things don’t go as I plan, he calculated, I can’t afford to lose the girl. Indeed, he had been getting increasingly afraid that her father would find out the truth about his debts and call the whole thing off. Then I’ll have nothing, he sighed. Day by day he had played for time: and now, on this day of all days, had come her extraordinary letter.

It was straightforward enough. He had avoided her for three weeks, Tatiana pointed out. Her father had other candidates in mind. And it ended firmly:

By the standards of the day, the letter was utterly astounding. For a young girl to write like that, in person, to a man: it was a breach of every rule of etiquette. He could scarcely believe that she had done such a thing. He hardly knew whether he was shocked or secretly impressed by this daring. But of one thing he felt certain: she meant what she said.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. What if he gave up? Would it be so terrible? With Tatiana’s money he could keep his fine house in St Petersburg and the estates. He’d be rich, secure, respected. People would say he’d done very well. ‘It’s time to leave the gaming table while I’m still ahead,’ he muttered.

Why then should he hesitate? Why not seize the life-line fate had thrown him? He opened his eyes and stared at the window, and at the winter darkness outside. There was just that one, last chance: a final, dangerous, throw of the dice. The old woman.

He sighed. It was horribly risky. Even if he got what he wanted, she could still change her mind. Then he would probably lose everything – money, reputation, even the chance of recovery. I’d be a beggar, he realized. And yet…

For several minutes more, Alexander Bobrov the gambler sat at the big desk pondering the chances. Then at last he sat upright, with a faint, grim smile on his face. He had decided on his play.

I’ll go and ask the old woman tonight, he decided.

For Bobrov the gambler was playing a secret game, with higher stakes than even young Tatiana’s fortune.

He was playing for St Petersburg itself.

St Petersburg: truly it was a miracle. At a latitude parallel with Greenland or Alaska, twelve hundred miles further north than the city of Boston, and nearer the Arctic Circle than to London or Berlin, the Russian capital was a second Venice. How lovely, how simple it was: built around the broad basin where the Neva, nearing its estuary, was divided into two forks by the big triangle of Vasilevsky Island whose apex gently pointed inland and whose broad base out in the estuary protected the city from the sullen rages of the sea.

Bobrov knew no greater joy than to approach by ship from the west, along that long, wide inlet of the Baltic known as the Gulf of Finland, to come through the markers, up the narrow channel round the island, and out into the basin of the river which lay before him like a huge, placid lagoon.

Was there any more beautiful sight in northern Europe? Nearby, in midstream, the tip of the island, the Strelka, with its houses and warehouses like so many little classical temples. Away to the left, in the middle of the north shore, and forming a little island itself, the old Peter and Paul Fortress. It contained a fine cathedral now, built by Trezzini, embellished by Rastrelli, whose needle-like golden spire, softly gleaming, soared a thin four hundred feet and linked the low lines of the city by the water with the huge open sky above.

Off to the right, on the southern shore, lay Peter’s Admiralty buildings, and the baroque and classical façades of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. How calm and serene it was: the distant stucco façades mostly painted yellow, pink or brown in those days, blended so softly with the wide, grey waters.

‘Perfect city,’ Bobrov would sigh, ‘that can be both masculine and feminine.’

City of Peter: he had laid it out. As if to remind the place perpetually of its military and naval origin, the three huge avenues – of which the famous Nevsky Prospekt was the greatest – which radiated from the centre of the south bank, converged not on the palace but upon the Admiralty. Yet the city’s topography and its soft lines were so suggestively feminine. And, strange to say, ever since Peter’s death, his city had been ruled almost entirely by women.

First Peter’s widow; then his German niece, the Empress Anna; then for twenty years Peter’s daughter Elizabeth. Each of the possible male heirs had either died or been deposed in months.

It had still been the reign of Empress Elizabeth when Bobrov was born. He remembered it with a smile: those were voluptuous, extravagant years. It was said the old Empress had fifteen thousand dresses and that even her French milliner had finally refused her credit! Yet she had talent: she had built the Winter Palace; her many lovers included some remarkable men like Shuvalov who had founded Moscow University, or Razumovsky the lover of music – men whose names would not only usher in Russia’s greatest age, but would grace European culture too. St Petersburg had become cosmopolitan, looking to the dazzling court of France for inspiration.

And then had come the present golden age.

St Petersburg: city of Catherine. Who would ever have guessed that this insignificant young princess from a minor German court would become sole ruler of Russia? She had come there as a nice, harmless little wife for the heir to the throne, Elizabeth’s nephew Peter; and so she would have remained, if her husband had not become unbalanced. For though he descended from Peter the Great through his mother, the young man was German – and obsessively so. Frederick the Great of Prussia was his hero. He loved drilling soldiers. He hated Russia and said so. And in his poor, long-suffering young wife, he had no interest at all.

What a strange contrast they had made: a blustering youth and a quiet, thoughtful girl; an heir who hated his inheritance, and this foreign princess who converted to Orthodoxy and diligently learned Russian. Though they did produce an heir, Peter soon turned his back on her, took a mistress, and virtually goaded her, out of desperation, into taking lovers of her own. Did he mean, subconsciously, to destroy himself? Bobrov thought so. In any case, when this dark and hated young man succeeded to the Russian throne, and the palace guards led by Catherine’s lover deposed and killed him, Alexander Bobrov was one of many who heaved a sigh of relief.

And who should replace this young monster? Why, who better than his popular young wife, mother of the next male heir, and such a lover of things Russian. Thus, by a strange fluke of fate, had begun the glorious reign of Catherine II.

Catherine the Great. Worthy successor to Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, whose work she would complete. Russia was throwing off the last of its chains. In the west, she had already taken back the rest of White Russia from a weakened Poland. In the south, the Turkish fleet had been smashed; and the ancient menace of the Tatar steppe had finally been crushed when Catherine deposed the Crimean Khan and annexed all his lands. To the east, Russia now claimed the entire north Eurasian plain to the Pacific. Across the Caspian Sea, Russian troops had struck into the Asian deserts to the borders of ancient Persia. And only last year, Bobrov had heard, a Russian colony had been set up beyond the Bering Straits, by the coast of Alaska. Perhaps, soon, the western American lands would be hers too!

More daring yet, Catherine even hoped to take Constantinople itself, seat of the Turkish Empire – the ancient Roman capital and home of Orthodoxy! She wanted to set up a sister empire there; and had already named her second grandson Constantine in preparation for the Black Sea empire she planned that he should rule.

Catherine the reformer. Like Peter before her, she wanted Russia to become a modern, secular empire. Slavs, Turks, Tatars, Finns, tribes without number: they were all Russians now. To help colonize the vast steppe-lands she had even imported German settlers. In imperial St Petersburg, eight religions were freely worshipped, in fourteen different languages. In the lands taken from Poland, there were even Jews. Already, the Church’s lands had all been taken away and put under state control. The laxer monasteries had been closed. New cities – at least on paper – had been created by the score. She had even tried to reform Russia’s outdated laws and organize the gentry and the merchants into representative bodies.

Catherine the enlightened. This was the Age of Enlightenment. All across Europe in the eighteenth century, rational philosophy and liberal political ideas had been making progress. In America, just freed by its War of Independence from the English King, the new age of liberty had begun. And now, to the astonishment of the whole world, this extraordinary, enlightened woman was ruling the vast and primitive land of forest and steppe.

Catherine the giver of laws. Catherine the educator. Catherine the champion of free speech, the patron of the philosophers who sang her praises. Voltaire himself, the most free-thinking man in France, used to write her endless letters. Catherine the sage, Catherine of the many lovers. St Petersburg and its voluptuous palaces were hers, and how serene, how calm it seemed.

Nobody took any notice of the quiet figure in the heavy coat who waited in the shadows near the entrance to the College. It was a talent he had, not being noticed.

He could have gone in. They would have welcomed him respectfully, without a doubt. This however he did not wish to do. Alternatively, of course, he could have given his message to a servant to carry. But he preferred not, and for this too he had his reasons.

And now at last, here was his man: State Councillor Bobrov was at the entrance, under the lamp, dressed in a thick fur coat and ready to go home. He looked rather pale. For some reason his sled was not ready and the lackey at the door had gone along the street to summon it.

The quiet figure left the shadows, walking quickly. As he drew close, Bobrov glanced at him, and seemed to start in surprise. The stranger made a little signal, reached him, and with an almost imperceptible gesture handed him the message. Then, without a word being spoken, he withdrew, and in a few moments had turned round the corner and was out of sight.

Bobrov stood quite still. The place was still deserted: no one had seen. He broke the seal and, in the lamplight, quickly read it. The message was very short:

That was all. There were not a hundred people in all Russia who would have known what it signified, but to Alexander Bobrov the message meant a great deal. As soon as he got home he would destroy it, for all communications of any kind were to be burned: that was the rule. For the moment, however, he pushed the letter into his coat pocket. Then he sighed, ‘The voice of conscience.’

His sled was coming. There was much to do that night.

Before Alexander, on the big mahogany table, were several dishes: a chicken, bought frozen from the market that morning, a bowl of sour cabbage, a plate of rye bread, beluga caviar, and a glass of German wine. But he had scarcely tasted anything. He was dressed for the evening now, in a blue velvet coat, and, nervous though he was, his face wore the gambler’s impassive expression.

He gazed round the large, high room. Its walls were papered dark green. On the side walls hung biblical scenes done in the classical manner, with sombre backgrounds. In the corner stood the big stove, tiled in green and red. The solemn effect was lightened, however, if one looked closely at the tiles: for half of them depicted some heavy, usually dirty, joke. These tributes to Russian humour were to be found everywhere, even in the formal rooms of the imperial palaces. At the far end of the room hung a portrait of his great-grandfather Procopy, the friend of Peter the Great, staring down morosely and looking rather oriental. Alexander had been brought up to revere the great man. ‘But I wonder if you ever attempted anything like this,’ he murmured.

It was time to go and face Countess Turova.

Though the empire’s hierarchy – the fourteen ranks – was open to any gentleman, there were still families who commanded special status outside the official system. There were a modest number of old boyar and gentry families, like the Bobrovs, who had managed to survive through the turbulent centuries; there were men with old princely titles – descendants of either the Tatar Khans or of St Vladimir himself; there were men with foreign titles, usually of the Holy Roman Empire; and nowadays there were also families with new titles, created by Peter and his successors for their favourites – princes, counts, and barons. Count Turov had been one of these, a formidable man. As for his widow, Countess Turova, even Alexander had to admit he was afraid of her.

She was his father’s cousin. She and the count had lost their two children, and at his death the magnate had left a portion of his huge estate to his widow, absolutely. ‘She can do what she likes with it,’ Alexander’s father had always told him. ‘Perhaps you can get your hands on some of it – though don’t ever count on her,’ he had added. ‘She’s always been eccentric.’

Yet this was Alexander’s dangerous mission tonight.

He could not ask the old lady for money outright. He knew she would show him the door if he did that. But was there a chance of an inheritance? There were other cousins who were also candidates: but a quarter of her fortune, even an eighth would do. Bobrov sighed. Although he had paid court to her for years, he still had no idea what his prospects were. Sometimes she showed him marks of favour, at others she just seemed to enjoy taunting him.

And what if, tonight, she said yes? His calculation was simple. She was over seventy now: the prospect of a legacy would give him confidence to take the extra risk; he even knew one or two moneylenders who would let him have enough to tide him over another year on the strength of it. Then he would turn down the German girl, burn his boats, and wait out events.

It was a horrible risk, even so. After all, his gamble might fail. Or what if, after promising him, Countess Turova changed her mind? Or what if she lived to be ninety? ‘The old bitch!’ he suddenly swore.

But he had taken his decision and he would stick to it. It was very simple. He felt the little silver coin in his hand. When he got to Countess Turova’s he would toss the coin just once. ‘If it’s tails, I marry the German girl. If it’s heads, and the old woman promises me a legacy, I’ll take a chance.’ He liked that kind of gamble. There was something almost religious about tossing a coin to decide one’s life. He smiled: he knew a card player who used to say that gambling was a kind of prayer.

The sled raced through the icy streets of St Petersburg, the faint glow from lamps and lighted windows rushing by in the gloom. A few stars could be seen.

The sled was splendid and enclosed. Two lackeys clung on behind; on the box in front sat the coachman – a huge fellow wrapped in a sheepskin, his big boots lined with flannel, a fur cap on his head. His neck, in the Russian peasant manner, was bare. Like all Russian drivers before and since, he drove at breakneck speed; and although there were few people about at such an hour, he still found the opportunity to cry out: ‘Na prava – keep to the right! Look out, soldier, damn you! Careful, Babushka!’

A boy rode on the offside horse. Both he and the coachman whipped the horses along unmercifully. What did they care? They were not Bobrov’s horses. For though he had fine horses of his own, the State Councillor preferred, like most people in St Petersburg, to use hired ones for ordinary journeys like this; and so these wretched beasts would be driven by all and sundry until they dropped and were replaced, in the usual careless Russian manner.

Bobrov sank back into the rich upholstery. The south bank of St Petersburg was divided into inner, middle and outer half-rings by three concentric canals. The outer canal, the border of the city’s rich heartland, was the famous Fontanka. Bobrov’s house lay in the fashionable First Admiralty quarter, in the middle ring, and his route soon brought him out on to the granite embankment of the great, frozen Neva. As the sled raced eastward, the ice of the river appeared on the left, the big, solid houses of the English merchants on the right. In a few moments they would be at the very heart of the capital.

He took the coin out and held it in his hand, feeling it in the darkness. What an astounding gamble it was: he was going to toss a coin for the whole Russian Empire!

This was the prize in the secret game he had been playing for so long. This was the reason why he did not wish to marry, and why he needed to keep afloat financially, just a little longer. For the prize was still, tantalizingly, in sight – perhaps only months away. The most brilliant position in the Russian state.

For Alexander Bobrov was planning to become the official lover of Catherine the Great.

It was no idle dream. For years he had been carefully manoeuvring towards his goal. And now at last – he had it on the best authority – he was the next in line. He had been promised the position by the man who was, almost certainly, Catherine’s secret husband.

At the court of Catherine the Great of Russia, there were a number of paths to power. But for a truly ambitious man, no career offered such brilliant prospects as those available to the man who shared her bed.

Though sometimes portrayed as a monstrous consumer of men, Catherine was in fact rather sentimental. Having been humiliated in her marriage, her own letters make clear that most of her adult life was spent in the search for affection and an ideal man. Nor was she hugely promiscuous. History records the names of less than twenty lovers.

But the opportunities for those who held this position were almost boundless. Mostly they were men from families like Alexander Bobrov’s, though some were more obscure. Their names were to go down in Russian history: like Orlov the brave guardsman who had won her the throne and whose brother had killed her hateful husband. Or Saltikov the charming aristocrat: was he, as some said, the real father of Catherine’s only official heir? Or Poniatowski: she had even made him King of Poland! And greatest of all, that strange and moody genius, the one-eyed warrior Potemkin who was now her mighty Proconsul in the Crimea, where he was building her a new imperial province greater than most kingdoms.

When a new lover was chosen, he could usually expect a present of a hundred thousand roubles after the first night. After that… Potemkin, it was said, had received close to fifty million! Had the empress secretly married Potemkin years ago? No one knew for sure. But whether he was her husband or not, one thing was certain: ‘It’s Potemkin who chooses her new lovers,’ the courtiers would say.

It had not been difficult for Alexander to make friends with the great man because he really admired him and had become one of his most loyal men. And when Catherine’s poor young lover Lanskoy had suddenly died two years ago before – having ruined his health with love potions, the court whispered – Alexander had seen his chance and gone straight to Potemkin, to put himself forward.

It had been close. A young guards officer had been sent in just before him and had found favour. But Potemkin had been impressed by Bobrov as a prospect, not least because he trusted his loyalty. ‘Even I have enemies,’ the older man confessed. ‘They’d love to see a man in that position who could be turned against me.’

Several times Alexander and his patron had discussed the matter. ‘If things don’t work out,’ Potemkin had promised, ‘I’ll send you in to see her. After that…’

That had been a year ago. Alexander had waited anxiously. He knew the young officer slightly and now he gathered every scrap of information about him that he could. He had several friends at court. They soon told him the young man had cast amorous glances at one of the court ladies, and that he was tiring of his position. Within months he might even get himself dismissed. And then, by God, it will be my turn, Alexander had promised himself. How he would astonish her! She liked men who were daring and intelligent, and he was both. He was sure he would charm her.

Only one worrying thought had crossed his mind: could he satisfy her? The empress had never been beautiful. Though her strong, German face and broad, intellectual forehead were fine, she was squat and frankly stout these days. She was fifty-seven and, he’d heard, sometimes a little short of wind.

But she was also Catherine, Empress of all Russia. In all the world there was no other being like her. Her power, her heroic position, her extraordinary mind – all these, for a man like Bobrov, in search of the summit of the world – made her desirable beyond all others. And, anyway, if there’s any problem in bed, I know how to get by, he considered. He was strong, fit, and not too sensitive. I’m always all right if I eat a good meal, he reminded himself.

And then… what a destiny! Mother Russia and all her mighty empire at his feet: he would be one of the innermost circle who ruled with the empress. There was no greater position in all the world. If he could just hold out a little longer.

Outside, St Petersburg slipped silently by, huge and magical. They were coming into the huge expanse of Peter’s Square, in front of the Admiralty. On his left he could see the long pontoon bridge that stretched across the frozen Neva to Vasilevsky Island. The bridge was not really needed, for the huge lagoon of ice was a busy thoroughfare in these winter months. Huge fairs were held upon it. He could see half a dozen roads across it, marked out by avenues of cut trees, or lamps which gleamed dimly until they almost faded in the darkness by the distant northern shore. A bonfire burned by the tip of the island. Further away, opposite the Winter Palace, was the faint shape of the St Peter and St Paul Cathedral’s slim spire against the night sky.

And it was now, as he came out on to the big expanse of the square, that something else, quite nearby, caught his eye: and for a few moments he seemed to forget himself, pulling the window of the sled open, letting the icy air freeze on his face as he gazed at it, with a look so strange that one would almost have thought he had been hypnotized.

It was the Bronze Horseman.

This huge statue, which had taken the French sculptor Falconet years to make, had only been put up recently; but already it was the most famous statue in all Russia. On a colossal granite rock a mighty horse, three times life size, reared up on its hind legs. Below it lay a serpent. And astride the horse, dressed in a Roman toga, was the living image of great Peter himself. In his left arm he held the reins, while his right, in a tremendous, imperial gesture, was stretched out, pointing across the broad Neva that lay before him.

Nowhere in the world, they said, was there a greater block of granite; never had such a huge casting in bronze been made. The splendid horse, copied from the finest in Catherine’s stables, seemed to be launching itself in an almost impossible leap forward into space. And now, as it did every time he saw it, the great statue took Alexander’s breath away. All his dreams and ambitions seemed to be expressed in this huge bronze hymn to Russia’s might. It had to be huge: had not Russia already cast, in Moscow, the biggest cannon and the greatest bell the world had ever seen? Of course St Petersburg should cast the largest statue in bronze. And although the narrow-minded priests had objected to Peter’s Roman, pagan dress, Bobrov saw that the French sculptor had captured the very essence of the new, imperial destiny that Peter had created for his country, and the genius of Catherine would complete. Russia, by her unconquerable will, would make a final, mighty leap and rule half the world.

The statue’s huge, granite plinth bore only the simple legend:

Like a great phantom it dominated the dimly lit square. It was unassailable. And as Alexander stared, the statue seemed, like the inner voice of his own ambition, to speak to him and say: ‘Little man: would you turn back now?’

No, Alexander thought. No, I cannot turn back. I have come too far. Better to gamble – to win an empire or lose all – just one more time.

And he took the silver coin he was to have tossed, and threw it out of the window, into the night.

‘Dear Alexander!’ She was smiling. ‘I am so glad you have come.’

‘Daria Mikhailovna.’ He bent down to kiss her. ‘You are looking wonderful.’

In fact, the countess wasn’t looking too bad. One could even see that she had once been attractive. Her little face, rather too heavily painted, always reminded him of some bright bird’s, especially as now, with age, her hooked nose had become more prominent. Her small, blue eyes were lively, darting glances from place to place. She was wearing a floor-length antique dress of mauve gauze, decorated with white lace and pink ribbons, which made her look like a figure of the previous generation from the French court. Her hair was fine; but somehow, despite the fact that it was powdered, it had a strange yellowish tinge at the sides, like tarnished silver. It was swept up high above her head into a daunting coiffure topped with curls and decorated with pearls and a pale blue ribbon.

To receive her guests, Countess Turova was seated on a gilt chair in the middle of her salon, which lay up one flight of the staircase in the great marble hall. Like most such rooms in Russian palaces, it was huge and magnificent. Its ceiling was over twenty feet high; its gleaming parquet floor contained at least a dozen woods. A gigantic crystal chandelier glittered above.

The guests were still arriving; many of them Alexander recognized. A German professor, an English merchant, two young writers, a distinguished old general, an even older prince: it was one of the pleasures of St Petersburg that one might find people of all nations and classes in such an aristocratic setting. For there was a warmer and easier spirit in Russia than in the noble houses of western Europe.

And it was a long tradition that, once a week, such people should come to the great Turov house on Vasilevsky Island. For the count had been a remarkable man. He had helped the great Shuvalov found Moscow University thirty years before; the writers of the mid-eighteenth century – the first such intellectual group in Russia – counted him their friend; even Lomonosov, Russia’s first philosopher and scientist, used to call upon him. Turov had travelled widely – even visited the great Voltaire – and brought back many treasures of European painting, sculpture and porcelain as well as a fine library, all of which were still housed in this splendid palace. And the countess, whose magpie mind had picked up a number of ideas in the course of her life with him, now clung to these with a tenacity which was in perfectly inverse proportion to her understanding of them. She kept open house for the intellectuals who, partly from habit, and partly amused by her eccentricity, continued to come. ‘They rely upon me,’ she would say. ‘I am their rock.’ She was certainly unchanging.

And upon nothing was the Countess Turova more constant than her devotion to the chief object of her worship. For if she revered her late husband, to her greatest hero she had erected nothing less than a temple. ‘In this house,’ everything seemed to say, ‘the enlightened worship the great leader.’

Voltaire. His quizzical image was everywhere. There was a bust of him on a pedestal in the huge marble hall, and another at the turn of the great staircase. There was a portrait in the large gallery at the top, and another bust in the corner of the salon. The great philosopher was her icon. His name came into the conversation ceaselessly. If someone made a good point, the countess would say, with finality: ‘So Voltaire himself might have said.’ Or even better, and with warmth: ‘Ah, I see you have read your Voltaire.’ Something which, Bobrov was sure, she had never done herself. It was astonishing how any subject could be suddenly brought back to the great man and his authority invoked. For all I know, she even thinks he regulates the weather, Alexander thought.

In deference to Voltaire, Diderot and the other French philosophers of the Enlightenment, only French was spoken in Turova’s house.

And one had to be careful what one said. It was amazing what the old woman could hear, and what she knew. She loved to catch people out. Indeed, after invoking the blessed name of Voltaire, her favourite phrase was a sharp: ‘Take care, monsieur. For I sleep with my eyes open.’ And it was never clear whether this was a figure of speech, or whether she meant it literally.

Now, however, still beaming, she tapped his arm lightly. ‘Do not go too far, mon cher Alexandre: I have special need of you tonight.’ He wondered what she was up to. ‘For the moment, however, you may go. Indeed, I see someone waiting for you.’

Alexander turned. And smiled.

Countess Turova’s house was a very large building with a heavy, classical portico between two wings. The basement rooms were almost on street level, and though many nobles let such places to fashionable merchants and shopkeepers, the countess did not, preferring to live in the house entirely alone with her servants.

With one exception. She allowed a widowed Frenchwoman, Madame de Ronville, to occupy a suite of rooms in the eastern wing. This suited the countess very well, for though this Frenchwoman was not a paid companion, she was dependent in that her charming quarters were let to her at a very low rent, and it was understood that she would be available when the countess wanted her company. ‘It’s so convenient for her to be near me,’ the countess was often pleased to say.

It was also quite convenient for Alexander Bobrov. For Madame de Ronville was his mistress.

Was there anyone more charming in St Petersburg? As he always did, he now felt that sudden tingle of almost adolescent excitement and joy in her presence, which was accompanied, usually, by a little trembling down his back. They had been lovers for ten years, and he never tired of her. She was almost fifty.

Adelaide de Ronville wore a pink silk dress, a little shorter than the countess’s, tightly gathered at the waist and opening out over a hoop skirt. The bodice was decorated with the appliqué silk flowers which the fashionable French called ‘indiscreet complaints’. Her hair, starched and powdered, was charmingly crowned with two little clusters of diamonds. As she stood quietly at his side, almost, but not quite touching him, he was aware of her slim, pale form concealed beneath. Now, her large blue eyes twinkling with amusement, she explained what was going on. ‘Her two stars for the evening have failed to arrive,’ she whispered. ‘Radishchev and the Princess Dashkova.’ She smiled. ‘She needs you to be the star – and her gladiator. Good luck!’

And now Alexander really had reason to smile. Nothing in the world could have been better. Now, he thought, I can please her so much she’ll want to leave me the lot!

There were probably no more brilliant figures in enlightened St Petersburg than those two. Princess Dashkova was almost a rival personage to Catherine herself, a fearless champion of liberty whom the empress had placed in charge of the Russian Academy. As for Radishchev, Alexander knew him quite well: he was already writing brilliant essays. How mortified the countess must be that they had failed to turn up. And what a chance for him.

For, despite all his efforts, Alexander was never quite sure that the old countess took him seriously. He had written articles which were widely praised. He had even, like Radishchev, contributed anonymous articles to journals on such daring subjects as democracy and the abolition of serfdom – subjects which, even in Catherine’s enlightened Russia, were still too radical to be discussed officially. He had shown her these articles and let her into the secret of their authorship; but even then, he did not really know if he had impressed her. Tonight would be his chance.

The role of gladiator, as Countess Turova’s regular guests called it, was always the same. For where other salons encouraged the gentle art of civilized debate, Countess Turova liked to watch a massacre. The victim was always an unsuspecting newcomer of conservative views who was confronted with a man of the Enlightenment – her gladiator – whose job it was to defeat and humiliate his opponent while she and her guests watched.

As Alexander glanced towards the countess now, he could see that a circle was already forming in front of her. On her left he noticed a newcomer, a general – a dapper, grey-haired man, short but erect, with piercing black eyes. So this was the victim. The Countess was beckoning. As he approached, he smiled to hear her reproving one of the young writers for something he had said. ‘Take care, monsieur,’ she was wagging her finger at him. ‘You cannot deceive me. I sleep with my eyes open.’ She did not change.

It was one of the joys of these evenings that Countess Turova never troubled to be subtle. When she was ready to start the argument, she merely picked up one of the fighting cocks, so to speak, and threw it at the other. Now, therefore, she turned abruptly to the unfortunate general. ‘So,’ she said accusingly, ‘I hear you want to close all our theatres.’

The old man stared at her in surprise. ‘Not at all, my dear countess. I just said that one play went too far and should be taken off. It was seditious,’ he added calmly.

‘So you say. And what do you think, Alexander Prokofievich?’

He was on.

Alexander enjoyed these debates. Firstly, he was good at them because he was patient; secondly, though the countess herself might be shallow, the debates in her salon often concerned important matters, touching the very heart of Russia and her future. For this reason, while he was anxious to defeat the general, he hoped also that he would be a worthy opponent.

The countess had set up the subject: freedom of speech. It was a key tenet of the Enlightenment and was supported by the empress. For not only had Catherine allowed private presses to operate legally, she had even written social satire for the stage herself. And so the debate began.

Everyone knew that Catherine had personally taken charge of her grandsons, Alexander and Constantine. She had put them under a democratically minded Swiss tutor who was teaching them how they might be enlightened rulers of the vast empires she planned to leave them.

Bobrov smiled. The Grand Duke Paul, Catherine’s only legitimate son, was the countess’s pet hate. He was a strange and moody fellow, and whether or not he was actually his son, Paul certainly modelled himself on the murdered Tsar Peter III. He hated the empress for taking over his sons and seldom came to court. An obsessive military disciplinarian, he had no interest in the Enlightenment, and there was a rumour that Catherine might one day by-pass him in the succession for his son. Even so, no sensible official like the general was going to speak ill of this man who might still one day be ruler. Wisely, therefore, the older man said nothing.

It was a powerful argument. The countess looked put out.

Ah, Pugachev. There was an almost audible sigh amongst the onlookers. The little phrase would reverberate in Russia for another century. For only twelve years had passed since the last, awful peasant revolt, which the Cossack Pugachev had led. Like all the others – like the great revolt of Stenka Razin the previous century – it had begun across the steppe by the Volga and swept towards Moscow. Like Razin’s revolt, it lacked strategy and organization, and had been crushed. But it had reminded the whole Russian gentry and the imperial government once more of that dark belief that plagued all Muscovy’s history: the people were dangerous and to be feared. That’s all one had to say: ‘Remember Pugachev.’

It was certainly true that Catherine ruled as an autocrat. The Senate and Council that Peter had set up did nothing but ratify her decisions. As for debates, when Catherine – trying to reform Russia’s antiquated laws – had convoked a huge council with representatives of all the classes, they had refused to cooperate with each other and had been disbanded.

The noble class set up by Peter was there to serve the state: and they were proud to do it. Catherine, needing their support, had showered them with favours. She had placed all local government in their hands. The charter she had enacted the previous year had confirmed almost every privilege they could desire. All their estates, including the old pomestie service estates, were theirs absolutely now. No other class could own land. Yet though they usually chose to serve the state, they were no longer obliged to. They paid no taxes. They could not be knouted. They were even allowed to travel abroad. Thus, from the state servants of the Russian autocracy, had arisen a privileged class with few responsibilities, yet more protected than any other in Europe. The general had shrewdly appealed to the self-interest of most of the people in the room.

But privilege was one thing: philosophy another. It was time to counter-attack.

And now the countess gave a smile of relief. Natural Law was one of the favourite ideas of the Enlightenment.

A gleam came into the general’s eye. This clever civil servant had gone too far.

The old man felt sure of his ground here. Over ninety-five per cent of the population were peasants – half state peasants, with a few, insignificant rights; and half privately owned serfs, like Bobrov’s. During that century, their rights had diminished even further: they could be bought and sold like cattle. Even the enlightened empress had only dared to recommend the nobility to be kind to them. And Countess Turova herself, to the general’s knowledge, owned more than four thousand souls. It seemed to him he had won the argument.

The countess looked at Alexander anxiously. He smiled faintly. It was time for the kill.

With which he made a pleasant bow to the Countess.

It was perfect. It was exactly what Countess Turova wanted to hear. Like the empress with her subjects, she would decide what was best for the four thousand rational beings she currently owned; and no doubt they would be grateful that their owner should be so enlightened, in this best of all possible worlds.

The little circle burst into applause. He heard the old lady murmur: ‘Ah, my Voltaire.’ The general remained silent.

And did Bobrov believe what he had just said? Yes, pretty much. He wished his serfs well. One day perhaps they would be free. And meanwhile, the enlightened era of Catherine was a fine time to be alive, if you were a noble, in St Petersburg.

At last the moment had come. As always at such gatherings, the main part of the evening, after the gladiatorial debate, had been devoted to cards. He had played for an hour, and played badly. For how could he concentrate? Every few minutes his eyes strayed back to the table where the countess sat, as he waited for a break in the play. As soon as he could, he excused himself and then stood discreetly at the back of the room, watching her. How small and bent her back looked, seen from that angle, how strangely frail. And yet, when at last he saw her rise and turn towards him, all his nervousness of her instantly returned as he stepped forward.

‘Daria Mikhailovna, may I speak with you privately?’ She started to frown. ‘It is a matter of great importance.’

If he had thought his conquest of the general would earn him a good reception now, it seemed he was wrong. Obviously, having served his purpose, he was no longer of interest to her that evening. She gave him a cold little stare, muttered, ‘Oh, very well,’ and started to move towards an ante-room. As he followed just behind her, he noticed that she was beginning to walk with a slight shuffle. Having reached the room, she sat down on a small gilt sofa, very erect, and did not offer him a seat.

‘Well, what is it you wish, Alexander Prokofievich?’

This was the moment. He had prepared himself, of course. But even so, how the devil did one ask an old woman tactfully if one was in her Will? He began cautiously.

‘As you may have heard, Daria Mikhailovna, there have been some negotiations with various parties concerning my possibly marrying again.’ Her face was impassive. ‘As a preliminary to such discussions, some of the parties naturally asked me to make a disclosure of my fortune.’ It was a complete fabrication, but it was the best excuse he could think of. He paused, wondering how she was taking it.

Countess Turova, face quite still, stretched out her hand in her lap and looked at the back of it with, it seemed, some admiration. Then she turned it over and looked at the palm. That, too, appeared to be satisfactory. Then she raised her hand on to the gilt arm of the sofa and drummed out a little tattoo to herself, as though she were becoming bored. Alexander pressed on.

‘The question has arisen,’ he continued delicately, ‘as to whether, besides my present estates, I have any further expectations?’ Again he paused, hoping she might help him.

She looked up with apparent interest.

‘I did not know you had any,’ she remarked sweetly.

Very well. If she wished to play with him he could only defend himself by seeming frank.

‘I expect I haven’t, Daria Mikhailovna. But I dared to hope that perhaps, as my kinswoman, you might have considered some mention of me in your Will. If not, of course, I shall act accordingly.’

The old countess remained expressionless. He had no idea if she believed him, or what she thought.

‘You mean to marry?’

‘I hope so. One day.’ He was careful not to commit himself. He saw the countess frown.

‘Can you tell me the name of at least one of the families with whom you are negotiating?’ Obviously she didn’t believe him. He mentioned the German girl’s family.

‘I congratulate you. A good Baltic family. It could be worse.’ Then she smiled at him. ‘But from what I hear, Alexander Prokofievich, this girl is a considerable heiress. I’m sure you will have no need of more than she already has.’ She glanced at her hand again, as though sympathizing with that limb that it had been forced to endure this boring conversation for so long. ‘Unless of course,’ she said quietly, and without changing her expression, ‘this has nothing to do with your getting married at all. Perhaps you are embarrassed financially in some way.’

‘No, no.’ The witch!

‘You have debts perhaps?’

‘All men have some.’

‘So I hear.’ She sniffed. ‘I have none.’ This, he knew, was an understatement. She ruled her stewards with a rod of iron. God knows what income she had.

For a few moments the countess’s attention seemed to wander and her eyes fixed on something in the middle distance.

‘Well, well. If you marry, I suppose we shall see less of you here.’

He ignored this allusion to Madame de Ronville.

‘Not at all, Daria Mikhailovna,’ he countered evenly. ‘I should bring my wife to see you frequently.’

‘No doubt.’ And now, quite suddenly, she gave him a brilliant smile. ‘Are you entirely ruined?’

‘No,’ he lied, while she watched him thoughtfully. There was a brief pause.

‘Well, Alexander Prokofievich, I should tell you that at present you are not in my Will.’

He bowed his head. Though his face did not flinch, he could feel himself going very pale; but knowing she was observing him, he looked up bravely.

‘However,’ she sniffed, ‘your father was my kinsman and you are obviously in difficulties.’ She said the last word with a kind of placid contempt. ‘I shall therefore include you. Do not expect a great fortune. But there will be, I dare say, enough.’

Dear God, there was hope after all.

‘It is time for my cards.’ Without even waiting for his arm, she abruptly rose to her feet. Then she stopped. ‘On second thoughts, Alexander Prokofievich, I will add one condition.’ She turned back to him. ‘Yes, I think it is time you married. So you will receive your legacy – but only if you marry this Baltic girl.’ She smiled happily. ‘That is all I have to say to you, monsieur.’ And with that she moved away.

He watched her go. How did she know, by what infernal instinct had she guessed, that this was the one answer in all the world he did not want?

‘I bet she really does sleep with her eyes open,’ he muttered bitterly.

The great house was silent; the guests had left. Alexander and his mistress had withdrawn to her apartment in the east wing and now at last they could talk alone. Naturally, they were discussing his marriage.

The wing was easily reached along a passageway from the main house; it also had a private entrance down a little back staircase that gave on to the street. It was perfectly arranged, therefore, for the conduct of a discreet affair. Adelaide de Ronville’s rooms were entirely delightful. They might have been in her native France: Louis XV and XVI furniture; an Aubusson carpet with a garlanded border; thick curtains of flowered silk with heavy valances and tassels; lush draperies on the furniture; tapestries with charming pastoral scenes; soft pinks and blues, gilt, but not too much. These were the elements that she had arranged with a lightness, simplicity and concealed sense of form that had their own special charm.

When Alexander had told her about the countess’s decision, she took his arm affectionately and smiled. ‘You must marry the girl, my friend.’

What an unusual woman she was. Half-French, half-Polish, she was above average height, rather square in the shoulder, with an alabaster skin. She had been a brunette until she was thirty-five, but now her natural hair colour was iron grey. She had an oval face, almond-brown eyes which were sometimes a little sad, and a broad ironic mouth. Her figure was slim, her breasts rather high; but it was, for some reason, a slight thickening about her thighs that, in their lovemaking, aroused Alexander to heights of passion.

It was remarkable how little she had altered in their ten years together. Only now was she entering her change of life, but that did not matter. Her slim, strong build had kept her trim; she moved with a wonderful, lithe grace and if, with the passing of the years, Alexander had noticed in certain places a boniness and a looseness of the skin that she could not help, he just directed his hands to other caresses, which better produced the illusion that nothing had changed. Indeed, the knowledge that they were cheating time gave him a sense of poignancy unlike any other he knew. It was the beauty of autumn – golden and warm.

Adelaide was grateful for the affair. As an old Frenchwoman had once told her: ‘An older woman improves a young man. But he is also good for her because he accepts her as she is.’ It was true. She savoured, as a little triumph, the fact that she could still drive this rather self-centred man to erotic delight.

In his way, Bobrov loved her. His affairs with younger women had never meant so much to him. He had only to watch one of her perfect little gestures, see the elegant way she moved, to forget all the others. ‘Besides, I can talk to her,’ he would say. They had few secrets. She knew of all his plans, even his desire to desert her for the empress’s bed. As she drily said: ‘It’s a career.’

And now she was firm with him.

‘You must secure this German girl at once.’

‘I don’t really want to, you know.’

‘Be grateful that she loves you, cher ami.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps it will be good for you.’

‘And for you?’

She gave a little shrug. Even now, he could still be heavy-footed. What did he want – a confession of her despair to wear like a trophy? A dismissal? Forgiveness? ‘One must be practical,’ she said calmly. ‘You will like it. It is good to have a family.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Enfin.’ There was the faintest hint of impatience in her voice. ‘You will not come here.’

‘I certainly shall.’ He would try to be a good husband, but he had no wish to desert Adelaide.

She, however, shook her head. ‘You must spend time with your wife, you know. It is very important.’

He sighed. ‘I know. But you will not forbid me to see you?’

‘Oh… that.’ She shrugged. ‘Who knows? We shall see.’

Would she take another lover? He disliked that idea, although he felt he could not in conscience lay further claim to her.

‘And this girl,’ she said at last. ‘What is she like?’

He considered.

‘She has a round, simple face; blue eyes, fair hair. Her cheeks get a little too red. She’s entirely innocent, though not stupid.’ He paused. ‘I should certainly be grateful, but I suppose my years with you have left me finding all other women inadequate.’

‘How charming he is, this gallant monsieur.’ Her lips twitched with amusement. ‘And do you include the empress amongst these other women, may I ask?’

He laughed. In fact, he had sometimes wondered whether this affair with an older woman would be helpful in coming to terms with the now ageing body of Catherine. He guessed not.

‘I was speaking,’ he smiled, ‘of women, not of the Russian Empire!’

A certain look told him that there was no need to say more. Her bedroom lay up a little staircase and he followed her there.

How lovely, how desirable she still was, as she slowly stretched and then, luxuriously, arched her slim, pale body. He smelt the thick, musk-like scent that was one of the secrets about her he had learned to cherish. He moved his hand softly over her breast.

Did a lover, he wondered, in the great act of passion, gain a glimpse of eternity? Possibly. In his love of Adelaide, this ten-year passion which defied the passing of the years, he did not think he saw eternity, but rather something else which he preferred. Their love, it sometimes seemed to him, was like a drop of amber which has trapped some tiny animal, centuries ago, in its warm embrace – and in doing so, captured the sunlight itself from that distant, long-forgotten day. He liked the analogy. The amber falls to the earth and is buried; yet it is preserved, as long as the earth shall last, he thought. At other times, he felt as if he and Adelaide were together on the vast, endless plain, enjoying their brief, passionate moment before they disappeared. And because their physical love was complete, he felt: This is enough. This is what I am. When it is done, I am content to be no more. And if the great darkness that followed was eternity, then he saw that too. One thing at least was certain. When he encountered Adelaide’s body he knew with certainty that this, and this alone, was his true homecoming and that, for the rest of his life, it would be his years with her against which all things would be compared.

For Adelaide, it was a little different. She did not look for eternity because to her that meant only age, and death. She knew that all sensations are passing. When she was younger, as her mind drifted after lovemaking, she would sometimes feel like a little boat, floating away upon a huge ocean; but nowadays, the images and sensations which came into her thoughts were rather different, and she felt herself more often a spectator watching the progress of her own life: at which times it seemed to her that she and her lover were not in a boat, but rather upon an island, slowly eroding in the middle of a river, and that the river was the passing of the years.

It was past one in the morning when Alexander woke. After making love he had fallen into a sudden, deep sleep; but it had been troubled, for an image had repeatedly come to him – he was not sure how many times – so vivid, so insistent, that it seemed more like a vision than an ordinary dream.

It was the countess. She was very pale as she rose up before him; she had an accusing look on her face and, for no reason he could understand, she was shaking a reproving finger at him and saying, in a voice that seemed to explain the whole universe: ‘Voltaire. Voltaire.’ The fact that this made no particular sense did not make it any less impressive or alarming.

He woke up with a shiver and lay for several minutes collecting his thoughts. It was comforting that Adelaide was dozing beside him: her pale form was not quite covered and after a little while he began to feel better. He looked at her. Could he make love again? He thought so. As he touched her lightly, her eyes slowly opened and she smiled a little drowsily. ‘You want more?’

He was looking down at her; his mouth began to part in a grin.

‘Ah, I see.’ She reached out her arms. ‘Come then.’ Yes, he decided. He certainly could.

Yet it was just as he had gently entered upon this second, late-night communion, that to his surprise, before the pale form of his lover, another paler image seemed to arise before his eyes, interposing itself between them.

It was the old countess again. She did not speak this time; indeed, her white face was so motionless that it seemed she was sleeping – except for one thing: her eyes were wide open and staring. Try as he might to banish the phantasm, she remained obstinately between them, gazing at him stonily, as if to say: ‘You see, I sleep with my eyes open.’

It was absurd. He tried to ignore her, but it was no good. It was as though the phantasm refused to let go of him. Did she sleep with her eyes open? While his body continued to perform, slowly, a little absently, the act of love, his mind could not seem to tear itself away from this proposition. Was she sleeping now, thinking of him perhaps, and all the time like some still, Roman statue, staring out into space? Perhaps it was because of his earlier dream about her, or because of their conversation that evening, but the question seemed to become more important with every moment that passed.

Suddenly he stopped and slowly withdrew himself from Adelaide’s embrace.

‘What is it?’

‘I must go.’

‘Where?’

‘I have to see her. The old woman.’

‘Countess Turova? You’re mad. She’s asleep.’

‘I have to see her asleep. I have to know.’

‘Know what?’

‘If her eyes are open.’

Adelaide sat up and looked at him carefully.

‘You are serious?’

‘Yes. It’s all right. I know the way.’

‘You mean to go into the house, to her bedroom?’ She shook her head, not sure if she was angry or amused by this eccentricity. ‘You do not choose a very good time to go on your expedition,’ she remarked.

‘I know. I’m sorry. Do you want to come too?’

She threw herself back on the bed and put her hand to her forehead.

‘Mon Dieu! No.’

‘I shan’t be long.’ He did not fully dress but, thinking it might be cold in the passage, he pulled on his coat. Then, still in stockinged feet, he made his way along the darkened passageway, through the connecting door, and into the main part of the house.

It was silent. By the great marble staircase, a guttering lamp gave a little light, but the corners and passages were in deep shadow. Downstairs by the main door an old footman was sleeping on a bench; Alexander could hear him snoring. The floor above, he knew, would be deserted except for the countess’s room and another little room across the passage where an old serving woman slept, in case the countess should require anything in the night.

He did not need much light. He knew the house well. Softly, making only two slight creaks, he mounted the wooden stairs that led to the countess’s room. At the top there was a little landing. On the right, through the open doorway, he could hear the rhythmic, heavy breathing of the servant. On the left, the door of the larger room was just ajar. Light came through the opening, but no sound. He moved silently to the doorway and peered through the crack.

On a painted wooden table he could see a large, three-branched silver candelabra. The candles had burned low but they shed a bright light. He could see pictures on the wall, and the edge of a gilt mirror; but the bed was hidden from view. He stood there fully a minute, hesitating. If she were not asleep and he opened the door, she would certainly see it. She would cry out, the house would be woken, and how would he explain himself then? He listened intently, hoping to hear her breathing, but could not.

Surely she was not still awake. Besides, having come this far, he did not want to give up now. Very carefully he began to push the door. It creaked. He stopped, waited, his heart pounding: still no sound; he pushed again. Now the door swung wide open, and he stepped into the room.

Her bed was to the right. It was a heavy affair with four carved posts and a canopy covered with huge festoons of heavy silk. On each side, on a night table, a single candle burned. And in the middle of this stately tableau, propped nearly upright with cushions, sat Countess Turova. Her hair had been undone. It had been parted in the middle and hung loosely down over her shoulders, the ends arranged in little strands tied with pale blue ribbons. Her chin rested on the thick lace which decorated her nightdress, so that her mouth was only just open.

And as he turned, Alexander found himself staring straight into her open eyes.

He stood stock still, waiting for her to speak. How could he explain himself now? Would she scream; would she be furious? Her face registered no expression at all. It was just possible to see that she was breathing, lightly, through her mouth, but her eyes remained fixed on a point somewhere just past his head. For perhaps half a minute they both remained there, silently; the little trickles of warm wax down the candles seeming to be the only things moving in the room. Then her lips made a dry, smacking sound; there was a single, faint snore. And only at that moment did Alexander finally realize: My God, it is true. She sleeps with her eyes open.

He knew that now was the moment to leave. He had discovered what he wanted. Yet somehow he could not pull himself away. He looked round the room. In one corner there was another little bust of Voltaire; on a table, some books; beside it a chair. But otherwise it was more sparsely furnished than he had expected. There was only one, thin rug on the floor. As he moved quietly across the room, her eyes remained fixed. He stood at the foot of the bed and gazed at her. What should he do now? For no particular reason, he made her a low bow. The eyes did not move. He grinned, made her another.

How did he feel about her? Did he hate her for what she had done to him? Not really. She had always been wilful and eccentric. Indeed, at this moment he felt only a sense of relief and light-headedness that he could stand before her like this without being afraid of her for once. Truly, he thought to himself, it is a wonderful thing to be awake when someone else is asleep. It gave one a feeling of extraordinary power.

He went over and glanced idly at the books upon the table. There were some French plays, a book of psalms, and several journals. One, he noticed, contained a radical article by Radishchev; but then he looked at the others – and smiled in astonishment. They all contained articles by himself! These were the anonymous articles, the daring compositions on the very borderline of what could be said about democracy and the serfs, of which he was most proud. He opened the journals. Besides his articles there were numerous underlinings and little notes, in the countess’s own hand. So she really had taken an interest. Could it be that, after all, she did approve of him?

As he turned the pages, he glanced up at her from time to time. Did her eyes flutter once? How strange: he was not even afraid any more. I could just sit here and discuss my articles with her, he thought pleasantly.

Finally Alexander got up and, in a sort of celebration of this curious interlude that providence had granted him, he did a little dance on the floor in front of her. Then he made her a solemn bow and withdrew. As he made his way back, no one stirred in the big house.

Except for the Countess Turova who, when she was sure he had gone, called her maid.

Tatiana was in love so much that it hurt. If Alexander came close, she trembled; if he smiled at her, she flushed; if she heard no word from him for a day, she became pale and silent. By now, therefore, her face was thin: she had scarcely eaten for two weeks.

Since early morning, she had been at the window, watching. Countless times she had seen a sled approaching that she thought was Bobrov’s and had pressed her face to the window uselessly until it had gone past. Once, catching sight of a muffled figure walking through the snow, she became convinced it was he, and hurried frantically from room to room, keeping pace with him, until he turned the corner and vanished.

It was dusk when, having been persuaded by her mother at last to sit down, she suddenly heard a small commotion downstairs, followed by a lengthy pause. Then her father was in the doorway.

‘Alexander Prokofievich is here to see you. He has something to say.’ She rose, very pale, trembling slightly. With terror she noticed that her father was looking concerned. ‘Before you go down, Tatiana, I must ask: are you sure, truly certain, that you want this man?’ She stared at him. Then Alexander had come to claim her. She flushed. How could her father ask? ‘Just a minute, Papa.’ She rushed to her room, followed by her mother, while her father was left, still frowning. He had some reservations about Bobrov.

Below, Alexander waited. The minutes passed and no one came. My God, he thought, what if after all this, she’s changed her mind? It was nearly a quarter of an hour before the door opened.

Tatiana’s entrance took him by surprise. She was wearing a dress of dazzling blue that perfectly complemented her fair complexion and made her pale blue eyes look brilliant. He had always thought of her face as rather round and placid; but now it had grown thinner, shedding its puppy fat and allowing the form of her cheekbones to show through. She had a fresh glow on her skin that was wonderful and advanced towards him with a calm smile.

‘Alexander, my father tells me you wish to speak to me.’

And he, gazing at this commanding heiress, could only think: Well, I’m damned! She has taken charge. Yes, he could see now that this strong young woman was capable of writing that amazing letter that had brought him so abjectly to heel. He was impressed.

There was only one thing that Alexander did not know: Tatiana had not written the letter at all. To be exact, she had written out the words, but not composed them. And even as she wrote them she had trembled, hesitated, and looked up with large, tearful eyes at the older woman who was calmly dictating them to her.

For her mother, when she could bear the girl’s agony no longer, had called upon the one person who, though they hardly knew each other, she felt sure could resolve the business. She had secretly taken Tatiana to see Countess Turova.

It was the countess who had taken the firm tone in the outrageous letter; the countess who had given Bobrov the deadline. She had been rather proud of her handiwork and quietly confident of the result. ‘He’ll be yours, if you want him,’ she had predicted coolly.

And why had she gone to such trouble? Not, certainly, because she cared particularly for Alexander or this poor little German girl. For she did not. But Alexander was a kinsman; the girl was an heiress. Properly established with a rich wife he might yet be a credit to her. Besides, it was a wonderful opportunity to exercise power – and such chances, it had to be admitted, did not come to her very often these days.

She had kept the business to herself. But when the unsuspecting Alexander had come to her asking about an inheritance – the very same evening – she had almost laughed out loud. Only by inspecting her hands had she been able to keep a straight face. And hadn’t she played her cards to perfection? How she enjoyed that – defeating the gambler at his own game!

As for the girl…

‘You know of course that he has a mistress?’ she had remarked with cold casualness to Tatiana, as soon as they had finished the letter, watching curiously to see how she took it.

Tatiana blushed. She did know. Her mother had found that out. But one expected such a thing in an older man; it even made him more mysterious and exciting.

‘I dare say with a young girl like Tatiana he’ll have no need to think of a mistress now,’ her mother had remarked hopefully.

‘Not at all,’ the old woman had contradicted her. ‘The more a man gets, up to a certain age, the more he wants.’ She turned to Tatiana. ‘You mustn’t give him time or opportunity if you want a faithful husband. That’s all there is to it.’

Armed with this information, and the stern letter, the lovelorn girl had returned home and waited.

Grief and pain had strengthened Tatiana. If she was distraught while she waited for Bobrov’s response, now in her moment of triumph she had steeled herself to be cool; however much she wanted him, she must not give him another chance to humiliate her. From now on she would make him see that it was he who was lucky, not she. And I’ll take him from that Frenchwoman, she thought. Indeed, it was this last determination that helped her, at this moment of crisis, to astonish him by her calm detachment.

So it was that Alexander Bobrov came to claim his bride.

A light snow was falling that evening as Alexander made his way across the city. The little fires by the watchmen’s huts at the street corners looked orange; the houses loomed as though in a mist. All of which pleased Alexander. For he did not wish to be seen. At the Fontanka Canal, he got out of his sled and, telling the coachman to wait for him, walked across the little bridge alone. In moments, he had disappeared.

He walked briskly but carefully, occasionally turning round, almost furtively, to make sure that he was not being followed. The quarter was respectable enough: about half the houses were wooden, half brick and stone. He passed a church and turned into a quiet street.

Only one thing puzzled him. What the devil had become of that letter? When the stranger had brought it to him the night before, he had intended to burn it as soon as he returned home. But then he had forgotten. Only after leaving Tatiana in the early afternoon had he remembered it, felt in his coat pocket, and discovered that it was gone. He shrugged. It didn’t really matter. It would be completely meaningless to anyone who found it.

Now Alexander turned through a covered archway into the shadowy courtyard of a large building. Its walls were covered with peeling pink stucco, and like many such buildings, it contained a series of sprawling apartments, two per floor, most of which were occupied by merchants of the middling sort. With a last, backward glance, he ascended the ill-lit stone staircase to the second floor. The stairs were deserted with the sole exception of a very large, black cat which sat by a window, and which Bobrov ignored.

When he reached the apartment he knocked carefully, three times, before the door opened a fraction and a voice from the gloom of the hall said quietly: ‘What do you seek?’

‘The Rosy Cross.’

The door opened wide. For Alexander Bobrov the gambler, unknown even to his mistress, was a member of the innermost circle of that great, secret Brotherhood – the Freemasons. And they had important business that night.

Perhaps she should have expected it. But she was very young. That was the conclusion Tatiana herself came to, in the years that followed.

She loved him. When she saw his carriage approaching or watched the lackey at the door help him off with his coat, a thrill of excitement would go through her. He had known how to make her love him. Even in the early days of their marriage he had seemed to control everything. In their lovemaking, when he was done himself, he would still arouse her in other ways, again and again, leaving her glowing, yet always wanting more of him. She loved the way he looked, the way he dressed, his knowledge of things beyond her. Even the slight thickening around his waist, which had begun in their first year together, seemed to her to suit him very well: he looked neat, yet powerful.

And surely he, too, was excited by their love. She knew he was: she could tell. She was learning too. She was eager to learn, both to experience new delights and to please him. She was happy; she was enthusiastic; she would – and did – astonish him!

Tatiana had great gifts. She was warm-hearted and practical. She liked to supervise the women in the kitchen; and would proudly make dainty pastries with her own hands, sitting opposite him afterwards, her face flushed with excitement, to watch his reaction to them. How delighted he seemed, how charmed.

It was therefore a shock to her when, six months after they had been married, he failed to come home one night and she began to suspect that he was still in love with Adelaide de Ronville.

She was right. And as Alexander often reminded himself, it was his fault. Indeed, he reflected, I cannot blame Tatiana at all.

It was not her fault that she was so young. It was not her fault if, like most girls of her kind, she had little education. She could not share a joke in French like Madame de Ronville, or even the old countess. It was not her fault if, on the occasions when he took her to salons like that of Countess Turova, she sat rather meekly to one side; nor that the countess, having cursorily asked after her health, would promptly ignore her for the rest of the evening.

It was not her fault if, after a few months, the subject of her pastries bored him; or that, without either of them saying anything, he usually went alone to the countess’s.

Nor was it her fault, Alexander knew, if their lovemaking left him only half-contented. That had seemed delightful at first, too; he had been aroused by her slightly plump young body. Yes, he had thought, this is how nature meant things to be. A young girl, full of energy, swept away by the first excitement of love. It was not her fault if she craved passion with either a submissiveness or a violence that were far from the varied subtlety of Madame de Ronville.

In short, he found his young wife was cloying, and that married life destroyed the delicate balance, the sense of silence within, which is the mark of the confirmed bachelor.

He felt guilty. He had known how to make his young wife love him and want him; yet he found he could not give Adelaide up. He did not wish to hurt his wife but what could he do? Only with the older Frenchwoman did he find peace. ‘Only with you,’ he would tell her, ‘can I sit, très chère amie, and listen to the ticking of the clock.’ Indeed, his passion did not diminish but increased. The little wrinkles on her face, so finely drawn, so expressive of her character, represented for him, as he gazed fondly down at her, no diminution of her sexuality but rather a distillation. Her body, still young in many ways, filled him now with an extra tenderness. It was strange, but his wife’s very youth made him love the older woman more. So it was that, discreetly but often, he had gone to call upon Adelaide.

It was a week after this first failure to return at night that Alexander was due to go to the Countess Turova’s salon. Tatiana said nothing, but made discreet arrangements; and shortly after he left, followed him in a hired carriage. She saw him go in, and waited quietly outside. Sure enough, at about eleven o’clock the guests departed and the lights in the big rooms went out. She waited another twenty minutes. The lights in the main body of the house were all out now. In the east wing, however, where Madame de Ronville’s apartment was, she could see a faint flickering of candles. Then they went out. A little later she went home.

Tatiana supposed she must expect such treatment. But the pain was very great. Wisely, however, she said nothing. What was there to be gained? He would deny it and then, more hurtful still, there would be a lie between them which would be even more humiliating.

So the weeks passed. She tried to shut the Frenchwoman out of her mind, yet thought of little else. And Alexander, for his part, tried to be kind to her. For it was not her fault if she did not make him happy: she was a good wife and, despite the pain he guessed he caused her, never complained. No, he had nothing to reproach her with. And because he knew all this in his head, it did not even occur to him that secretly, in his heart, he blamed her for everything.

It was in the autumn of 1787 that two new circumstances arose in Tatiana’s life. The first was her discovery that she was pregnant. This brought her only joy. Surely it will bring Alexander closer to me, she thought.

The second, however, was a puzzle. For she began to sense there was something else going on in Alexander’s life – something secret – about which she knew nothing. The most obvious sign was his unexplained absences.

Several times during the previous months he had gone off in the evenings on unexplained business. Once he had done so late at night – but at a time when she knew for certain that Adelaide de Ronville was out of the city. Could it possibly be that Alexander had another – a second – mistress?

Then in September, just after she told him she was pregnant, he abruptly went to Moscow for two weeks, giving her an explanation which was strangely vague. And Adelaide was in St Petersburg.

So it must be another woman then – but who?

It would have surprised Tatiana very much if she had known the real truth: and still more had she understood that the person Alexander was going to see was both her greatest friend – and also her enemy.

The history of the Freemasons in Russia is, by its nature, shrouded in darkness. Its records were nearly all hidden or destroyed. Yet, about its general shape, a good deal is known.

There were many Masons in St Petersburg. The English lodges were especially popular. After all, the English were fashionable: every rich man wanted an English thoroughbred; every lady an English dog; and the smart place for a fellow like Bobrov to be seen was the English Club. Besides, English Freemasonry reflected the character of that easy-going country. It gave no trouble. Non-political, not too mystical, concerned with philanthrophy, the English lodges were patronized by foreigners and Russians alike.

When, therefore, back in 1782 some of Bobrov’s English friends had invited him to join, he had accepted gladly.

And he would probably never have given it another thought, but for a chance encounter in Moscow, a year later. An old acquaintance from his student days, discovering that he was in Moscow, had assured him: ‘But, my dear fellow, you must meet some of the Masonic circle here – they’re the best people in society.’ And so it was, upon his next visit to the old capital, that Alexander Bobrov encountered two highly significant people: the prince and the professor.

The first was a rich aristocrat and patron of the arts; the other a middle-aged, balding, rather abstracted figure who was head of the Moscow University Press. Indeed, one would almost have called Novikov nondescript had it not been for a certain strange, though kindly light in his pale blue eyes. This was the man Alexander liked to call the professor.

It was the professor with whom he had had his secret rendezvous, that snowy December night, in the pink house beyond the Fontanka Canal; it was the professor who had become his mentor and led him into the very different and secret world of higher Masonry; and it was the professor whom, ever since they met, Alexander always thought of in the same way: as the voice of his conscience.

There were several reasons why Alexander should have become fascinated by his new friends in Moscow. They were enlightened and educated – the centre of the University circle. The prince and his friends were the cream of the capital’s aristocratic society: that appealed to Alexander’s vanity. And also, though he scarcely realized it himself, the secret hierarchy of higher Masonry reminded him of the bureaucratic ladder – and Bobrov was one of those men who have only to see a ladder to want to climb it.

For three years, making numerous visits to the professor in Moscow, and corresponding by letter, Alexander had studied as his mentor led him through the first of the higher degrees of Masonry – first to the rank of Scottish Knight, then to Theoretical Brother. ‘Our mystical secrets go back to the very dawn of Christianity,’ the professor explained. ‘To ordinary Masons, the secret signs we use – the hieroglyphs – are mere playthings. These men do good works, which are admirable, but they understand little. The true meaning is revealed only to those who are worthy.’

There was something very pure about the quiet scholar that Alexander found impressive. Indeed, at first he had hesitated to engage in higher Masonry because he had heard rumours that these inner orders practised alchemy and magical arts. But there was nothing like that with the professor. ‘The way I shall lead you,’ he promised, ‘lies along a pure and Christian path. Our only motive is a burning desire to serve God and our blessed Russia.’

The professor worked tirelessly. Besides his official duties at the University Press, it was he who ran the private Freemason’s Press which turned out books and pamphlets for the membership. Dozens of bookshops distributed these in the main cities. ‘We spread our gospel,’ the professor would say happily.

And in many ways, Alexander realized, the Masonic Brotherhood was like a secret Church. For ever since Peter the Great had made Russia a secular state, the ancient prestige of the Orthodox Church had declined. Peter had abolished the Patriarch; Catherine had taken all the Church lands and put them under state control. Though the peasants still followed the Church, and were often Raskolniki – for the enlightened Catherine tolerated these old Schismatics with polite amusement – for men of Bobrov’s class it was different. Few of his friends took the Church seriously, yet they often felt something was missing from their lives, so it was not surprising that they were sometimes attracted to the religious and mystical atmosphere of the Masonic Brotherhood. It salved their consciences, and convinced them that they were truly doing good.

And he himself, he had to admit, was drawn to the professor’s Christian piety. Though they only met from time to time, he often felt the older man’s influence upon him. It was not strong enough to divert him from his worldly plans; yet, there was no denying it, he felt it like a reproach. Perhaps, he acknowledged, in this matter too I am gambling: that if I fail to win the world, I shall still, through the professor, save my soul.

Yet during his studies, Alexander was also conscious of something else – an inner, organizing force at work in the Brotherhood which for some reason was hidden from him. Two years passed, however, before one day in the autumn of 1786 the professor said to him: ‘I think it is time for you to take another step.’ And he gave him a certain little book and said: ‘Take it and read it through. Then, if you wish to become one of our number, make your application to me.’ And thus Alexander finally discovered the inner circle. ‘We call ourselves the followers of the Rosy Cross,’ the professor said.

The Rosicrucians: the secret elect. There were only about sixty of them in all Russia, and it was a tribute to his talents that they had chosen Alexander to be of their number. Though this secret circle controlled most of their activities, ordinary Masons did not know they even existed. ‘They know us, but not our true identity,’ the professor explained, ‘in order that we may protect our mission from ignorant eyes.’ Indeed, their secrecy was such that, while every Freemason had a secret name, the Rosicrucians amongst themselves had yet another set of coded identities. And so when the professor, that cold December night in 1786, had summoned Alexander to his first Rosicrucian meeting at the pink house beyond the Fontanka Canal, he had signed his message not with his Knights Templar name – eq. ab ancora – that was used in the ordinary Masonic lodges, but by his secret Rosicrucian name: Colovion.

For Alexander, that first meeting of the inner circle had been a powerful revelation. It was a small group – the prince and the professor from Moscow, himself and one other from St Petersburg. And for the first time, the professor began to show him the real purpose of the Brotherhood. ‘We seek no less than to create a new and moral order in society,’ he declared. ‘We shall lead it forward.’

‘You mean all Russia?’ He knew that there were Masons in high places in the government.

‘Not only Russia, my young friend. In time, the whole world,’ the older man said seriously. And though he did not elaborate, Alexander had a sense that the Rosicrucian network extended far indeed. Even so, he was awestruck by what the prince then added. ‘I can also tell you that an approach is being made to the Grand Duke Paul, to ask him to be our secret patron.’ He smiled. ‘And I am hopeful that he will accept.’

The heir to the throne! He might not particularly like that strange man, but Alexander could see at once the huge possibilities if Paul were their patron.

We Rosicrucians could finish up ruling Russia, Alexander thought excitedly. How strange that, on the very day when he had reluctantly committed himself to Tatiana, and given up hope of entering Catherine’s inner circle, this new possibility should have opened up before him. He smiled to himself. Perhaps Bobrov the gambler was being saved by fate for even greater purposes.

There was just one problem. The professor was not satisfied with him.

‘I find in you a coldness, a lack of fervour,’ he had sometimes complained when Bobrov studied with him. He had been delighted when Alexander told him he was to marry. ‘Ah, that is good, my friend. It will open your heart.’ But less than a year later he wrote:

Though Alexander dutifully burned this letter, as was the rule with all Rosicrucian correspondence, he still seemed to see it before him every day. He knew the professor was right. His conscience troubled him. Yet he could not give her up.

A message came from a visiting Mason from Moscow. ‘The professor told me to tell you he is praying for you.’ It did no good. His next letter was noticeably cool. And when Alexander met him in Moscow later that year, his mentor was very angry.

‘The members of our inner order must be men of good conscience, Brother Alexander. We expect you to follow the example of Grand Duke Paul, who is devoted to his wife, not that,’ and now his pale eyes suddenly blazed, ‘of the profligate and wicked court of his mother the empress!’ Then more gently he added: ‘Marriage is not always easy, Alexander, but all of us count on you to mend your ways.’

And Alexander, rather shaken by the professor’s vehemence, told him he would try to reform. At the time, he even meant it. Little as Tatiana knows it, the professor is her greatest friend, he thought.

There was, however, another cause of friction between Alexander and Tatiana, which the professor could certainly do nothing about. This was the issue of money.

It had come up so gradually that he could hardly say when it began. At first it had been an occasional enquiry about the estates, or the household expenses, which he took to be childish curiosity. Yet after a little while, he began to notice that there was a certain quiet persistency in her questions.

‘Do you know how many servants we have, Alexander?’ she had asked after they had been married three months. He had no idea, and no interest in finding out. Sixty? Eighty? ‘And how much do they cost?’ she had gone on.

‘Nothing,’ he replied shortly.

In a way, this was true. For though merchants and foreigners hired their servants at great expense, Russian noblemen just brought in serfs from their estates. A hundred was nothing. The women worked in the kitchens or elsewhere out of sight; the men dressed in livery like lackeys. One might see a footman who had just pulled his livery coat on over his peasant’s smock and failed to do up the buttons; none of them was really presentable; but things were the same in most of the houses he knew. Alexander did not even know where they all lived. In the basements he supposed.

‘But they eat food,’ Tatiana reminded him. ‘What does that cost?’

How the devil did he know? Food came. It was eaten. The Russka estate brought some cash payments and the rest in kind. Cartloads of provisions would arrive at the St Petersburg house – and immediately disappear. The peasants on the Riazan estate paid him in barschchina labour: his steward sold the grain and sent him the proceeds. He knew he spent it all, but had no idea how.

Sometimes these questions amused him. But after a time they began to annoy him. How much did the mountains of wood for the stoves cost? Why did they have so many carriages they never used? Shouldn’t they go and inspect their estates?

‘Your father gave us plenty of money. We’ve no need to worry,’ he would assure her.

Indeed, Tatiana’s father had discovered Alexander’s financial position soon after the marriage, and although Tatiana’s dowry had been ample to pay all his debts and leave them an estate to spare, the Baltic nobleman had not been best pleased, and the relationship between him and Alexander was cool thereafter.

So Alexander could not help suspecting that her father’s influence was at work when, one day just before she discovered she was pregnant, she had astounded him by remarking: ‘Don’t you think, Alexander, that you should give me some accounting of how you have spent my dowry?’

It was a calculated insult! She was his wife, and barely seventeen years old to boot. What impertinence! Furiously he had burst out: ‘You damned foreigners! You Germans – the Dutch and English are just the same – you count every kopek. Why,’ he searched for an insult, ‘you’re like so many Jews!’ But he could see that, despite the fact that she submissively bowed her head, she was not satisfied.

Besides, there was something he could not tell her.

The costs of the Masonic Press were considerable. The publishing programme was ambitious. And, it had to be admitted, the professor was sometimes a little vague about keeping accurate accounts. Already, at the time of his marriage and in addition to the contributions to the Brotherhood, Alexander had been asked to help support the Press. How could he refuse, when men like the prince were contributing handsomely? Indeed, he had been amazed to discover that some students of higher Masonry were prepared to consecrate almost their entire fortunes to the cause. He certainly did not want to lose face before his new friends. So it had been with some satisfaction that, soon after his marriage, he had announced: ‘I shall be able to make a contribution.’

Tatiana would have been surprised indeed to know, when Alexander left for Moscow just after she became pregnant, that he was going to see the professor at his estate; that he was hoping for a reconciliation with his mentor; and that with him he was taking a further contribution, which amounted to nearly a fifth of her dowry. Had she known it, she might indeed have concluded that, if the professor was her friend, he was also her enemy.

1789

It was on a raw, dull day in March in that year so fateful in the history of the world, when the ice on the Neva was still solid, that Alexander Bobrov the gambler struck a last bargain with God. It was not the deal he had wanted; but it seemed to be the best he could get at the time.

The morning was grey: a faint wind, on its way westwards from the icy waters of Siberia, hissed through the huge open squares of St Petersburg. In the big salon of their house, Alexander was facing his wife. He had not returned home until dawn that morning, but they were not speaking of that. He was sitting, and Tatiana was standing, to ease her back: for she was eight months pregnant with their second child. And he was glowering at her.

Damn her! Didn’t she trust him? How dare she defy him?

She trembled for a moment, but did not reply. Damn her! Damn her a thousand times. Or was she taunting him deliberately, because of Adelaide?

Tatiana stood quite still, holding on to the back of a chair for support. If she did not speak for a moment, it was because she was having to prepare herself, and she was nervous. Why did all these things have to come to a head when she was so pregnant?

Did he love her? It was not only the Frenchwoman: there were those unexplained disappearances to Moscow and these mysterious evenings out in St Petersburg. What was she to make of it?

Strangely, she did not hate Adelaide de Ronville. Sometimes she would meet her rival at Countess Turova’s. The Frenchwoman was always polite and never made the faintest reference to her relationship with Alexander. Tatiana supposed she should be grateful for that and even admired the other woman’s poise. Madame de Ronville did not even try to patronize her. She will be old soon, Tatiana had told herself at first. It will pass. Indeed, she even thought she could guess how the other woman felt. We’re both his mistresses, after all, she realized, but I am young and have his children. It must be hard for her.

She could not help loving Alexander: perhaps it was his combination of strength and weakness that made her do so. Even his vanity, strangely, pleased her. For she understood him better than he realized. Large though his talents were, she saw that his ambition was always a step ahead of them, leaving him never satisfied, never secure. He loves her, but he will need me, even if he only exploits me now, she told herself.

But on one subject she could not give way.

Alexander was short of money again. It was not a crisis, he was not ruined; but he had started to incur debts and was short of cash. Naturally, therefore, he had asked Tatiana to apply to her father. She was the heiress, after all. Where had the money gone? On their usual, lavish lifestyle, he supposed. And also, of course, to the Rosicrucians.

His admiration for the professor had, if anything, increased – despite his mentor’s vigorous opposition to his own way of life. The older man overcame every adversity. The Masons had encountered some opposition recently. Their enemies had even complained that their works were sacrilegious. But the professor had got his friends in the Church to issue an almost complete vindication. The debts had mounted; but he had quietly continued printing away, on presses down on his estate. Alexander could not help feeling a sense of affection and admiration for him.

It was getting damnably expensive though. Hardly a month went by without some fresh appeal for help from the Brethren; and had it been any lesser cause Alexander might have been tempted to hold back. But still the prospect ahead thrilled him. Any guilt he might have felt about spending his wife’s money was tempered by the one thought: The Rosicrucians may yet rule everything.

So when, that morning, he had asked his wife to apply to her father for extra funds, it had come as a shock to him when she refused. How could she? It was her duty to do so. But she had maintained an obstinate silence. And now, despite her condition – and perhaps because, in his heart, he felt somewhat guilty – he shouted at her: ‘Tatiana, I command you to do this.’

It was with astonishment, therefore, that he watched her turn and look down at him with an expression he had never seen before. It was angry and, yes, contemptuous. As for her words, it was a moment before he could even take them in.

‘I’m sorry, Alexander, but I see no reason why my father or I should trust you with any more of my fortune when you have still failed to account for the dowry money which, I must remind you, is mine. And if you do not know where it is, then perhaps I, and not you, should control our affairs.’

He stared at her. He felt his face go white with anger. Trembling with rage he roared at her, in a voice he scarcely recognized himself: ‘Jewess!’

Then he leaped up, and struck her in the face so hard that she crashed to the floor.

An hour later, Alexander was still in his study. He had not yet been able to bring himself to go out. How could he have done such a thing? He knew very well why: because he was guilty.

Am I going to ruin my wife and family? Even for the Rosicrucians and my own, endless ambition? he asked himself.

Before him lay several letters. One cancelled the purchase of a splendid English horse, another that of a magnificent new carriage, of which he had no real need. But more significant by far was the much longer letter he had just completed. It was to the professor and it ended:

He had left the Rosicrucians. He smiled ironically. That would save more than his household expenses every year.

It was just as he sealed this letter that they brought him the news: Tatiana had gone into labour.

The day had passed, then the night. An anxious, interminable morning. And still Tatiana was in labour. The grey light outside gave the room a dull tone.

The afternoon before, a Polish midwife had been summoned; a German doctor in the evening. By midday they had both been shaking their heads. Since midday, there had also been one other figure in the room. The serfs from Russka who worked in the house had been urging Alexander to let her in all morning. They had no faith in the midwife from the city; as for the German doctor, they viewed him with silent contempt. But this was one of their own, a midwife from the country, a true Russian from the hamlet of Dirty Place. She was sitting in a corner now, doing what the foolish city folk should have been doing from the start: reciting the strange mixture of Christian prayer and pagan spell without which no child in the Russian countryside should be born. Alexander had glanced at the old woman and shrugged. God knew if she was doing any good, but he supposed she could do no harm.

And now the doctor was leading him out of the room. His face was grim.

‘It’s blocked,’ the doctor told him. ‘The baby can’t get out. There’s a chance, maybe, that I can save the child. But the mother…’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘She may bleed.’

‘To death, you mean?’

‘Perhaps. Some do, some don’t.’

‘What should I do?’

‘Nothing. Pray.’

The doctor went back in, leaving Alexander outside. He went to his little study, mechanically sorted through his papers, then tried to recite prayers, but received only a sense of his own emptiness. After a time he went back again and let himself into the bedroom.

How shocking it was. Tatiana’s round face was drawn and ghostly white; sweat had matted her fair hair and her eyes were large with fear. The contractions were making her shiver. ‘At any time,’ the doctor whispered, ‘the vessel of blood may break.’

Alexander gazed at Tatiana helplessly. It was terrible to be so useless. He went over to her and took her hand. She looked up at him and tried bravely to smile. He squeezed her hand. She winced as a contraction reached its peak, took a deep breath, and kept her large blue eyes fixed upon him; for at that moment, he realized guiltily, he was her only lifeline. He smiled, tried to make her feel, at her hour of death, that he loved her. What else could he do?

‘I am having your child,’ she whispered.

He squeezed her hand but could not speak. She was about to die. He thought she knew it. And she was afraid, so much more afraid than she had ever been in her life, as she looked up at him with frightened eyes that said: ‘Even if you cannot help me, tell me, this once, that you love me.’

And it was then, a little after three o’clock on that March afternoon, that Alexander Bobrov, seeing little more to gamble for in the earthly or the heavenly kingdoms, made his final bargain with God.

Let her and the child live, merciful God, he silently vowed, and I will be faithful to my wife and give up Adelaide de Ronville.

It was, it seemed to him, the last card he had to play.

1792

There is no stranger or more magical time in the city of St Petersburg than midsummer. It is the season known as the White Nights.

For around the summer solstice, in those northern climes, the endless days do not give way to darkness. Instead, the daylight lingers far into the evening and beyond until, at last, for the space of half an hour or so in the early hours, it is transformed into a pale, glimmering twilight. It is a magical time. The atmosphere is charged, the world unreal. Buildings seem like grey shadows, the water wears a milky sheen, and on the distant northern horizon the twilight greyness is punctuated by the flashes of the Aurora Borealis.

Season of White Nights: electric season. Surely it must have been some dangerous magnetism in the atmosphere that led Alexander Bobrov to commit such acts of complete insanity. No other explanation is possible.

For by that summer, the world had entirely changed. It was as if some huge electric storm was about to break. Who knew what monarchies might fall, what societies dissolve into chaos? Each day, St Petersburg waited for news from the west where, just three summers before, with the storming of the Bastille in Paris, the epoch-making cataclysm had begun.

The French Revolution. Already the King of France, his Queen Marie Antoinette and their children were virtual prisoners. Who knew what these revolutionaries – these Jacobins – would do next? The monarchs of Europe were outraged. Even now, Austria and Prussia were at war with this disruptive new revolutionary power. Britain was ready to join. And no one was more shocked than the enlightened Empress Catherine of Russia. The principles of freedom and Enlightenment were one thing – splendid theory. Revolution and mob rule were quite another. Remember Pugachev! She had crushed that desperate Cossack and his peasants’ revolt years ago; she was not going to invite another peasant rising.

Small wonder therefore if enlightened thinkers, from the empress down, looked at these results of the Enlightenment with horror and concluded: ‘It went too far, too fast.’ Instead of reform, they saw only chaos. ‘These Jacobins have betrayed us all.’

And if, in France, the revolutionaries believed they were witnessing a new springtime of the world, at the distant court of St Petersburg, it seemed rather that a golden era was passing – as though Catherine’s long summer, having extended too far into autumn, had suddenly been exposed by this harsh, cruel wind blowing in the world; and’ that now her leaves were suddenly falling, revealing a bare forest before the unrelenting winter.

The empress was lonely. The faces about her were changing. Above all, she had lost her one true friend, her gallant old warhorse, the great Potemkin.

What a loyal friend he had been. He had given her the Crimea. Just two years before the Revolution, together with the awestruck ambassadors of the great European powers, he had taken Catherine on a magnificent tour of that huge southern province by the Black Sea. The path had been almost literally strewn with flowers. He had even erected delightful stage-set hamlets – the famous Potemkin villages – along the way to charm them. The villages might be artifice, but the new empire was not: it was rich indeed. And so it was that at last a Russian ruler had come to sit in the fabled palace of the Crimean Khans, at Bakhchisarai, and receive the final homage of the Tatars.

And that, both for Catherine and Potemkin, had been the end of their long, late summer. The winds had started to blow; the French Revolution had come; they had failed to take the last, glittering prize of Constantinople; and sadly for both of them – just as Alexander Bobrov had foreseen – Catherine’s young lover had been unfaithful and this time Potemkin’s enemies had succeeded in putting their own protégé, a vain young man, into her bed. It was the end of the game for Potemkin and he probably knew it. He came to St Petersburg, gave the most gigantic party for the empress that the capital had ever seen, and then departed south once more, in deep depression. In a year he was dead.

She was lonely. What had she left? A vain young lover – at least she was not alone in bed. A son who had come to hate her, and who grew daily more like her late, impossible husband. Her two grandsons, educated by her own instructions, and adored. And the empire. She would preserve it and strengthen it for her grandsons. As with everything she did, she was thorough.

How changed was St Petersburg now. France was quite out of fashion: even French dress was frowned upon. The newspaper reports of the terrible French contagion were kept to a minimum. ‘Thank God,’ wise men declared, ‘that our peasants can’t read.’ Public discussion of the Revolution was forbidden, republican books burned, plays banned. It was the philosophers who had brought all this to pass: even enlightened men had to admit that now. If she was firm with others, Catherine was also firm with herself; sadly the empress ordered that the bust of her old friend Voltaire be removed from her rooms, as she mustered her strength to face this new, grey world.

And who could blame her if she turned with bitterness upon those she feared might weaken the state in these dangerous times? When Radishchev the radical was foolish enough to publish a book – at such a moment! – calling openly for the ending of serfdom, she was so angry that he was lucky only to be sent to Siberia. What, she demanded, were the Freemasons up to, with their secret activities? Were they conniving with her son? Were they Jacobins of some kind? It seemed not, but she had ordered that the professor be questioned carefully, just to find out. ‘Russia is looking,’ she made clear, ‘for loyalty.’

In all St Petersburg, in the autumn years of Catherine the Great, there was no more loyal man than Alexander Prokofievich Bobrov.

‘The Jacobins are traitors,’ he often said. On the Enlightenment, he was in total agreement with the empress. ‘Freedom of speech, like reform, is only possible when things are stable,’ he would declare firmly. ‘We must be very careful.’

For in all St Petersburg, there was no more careful man than he. He lived in a modest house, no longer in the First Admiralty quarter but in the less fashionable Second. He kept only thirty servants and seldom gave dinner to more than a dozen guests. His carriage and equipage were modest; even his debts were modest. Indeed, he almost lived within his income.

He was still a State Councillor. For some reason his career had come to a halt. And with his old patron Potemkin gone, it seemed unlikely that he would rise higher. ‘He’s a very nice man,’ people now said: and a wise fellow knows he is going no further when they say that. Yet he appeared to be content. He still had hopes of minor appointments in the future which might supplement his income; and if he had such hopes, it was because people these days said something else about him too. ‘Bobrov,’ they would agree, ‘is sound.’

He had worked hard at that. From the very moment of the Revolution, he had severed his ties with all radicals. When Radishchev had been arrested, he had even submitted a brief article to a journal exposing the monstrous errors of his former acquaintance. By good luck, also, he had never had any contact with the Rosicrucians since the day he had sent his resignation to the professor. Indeed, he had even avoided the ordinary Masonic lodges. If his life was duller, it was also very safe. And how else should it be, for a cautious family man?

For if Alexander had struck a bargain with God, that terrible day in 1789 when Tatiana lay near death, the Almighty had kept His side of it. Tatiana had lived. Not only that, she had produced a fine baby boy and then, two years later, another. For his part, Alexander still saw Adelaide de Ronville as a friend, but no longer as a lover. He was a model husband: a little paunchy now, but dependable, so that his old friends said with a smile: ‘Ah, Bobrov – a very married man.’

There had been one unexpected set-back: Tatiana’s father had died and, to everyone’s surprise, left only a pittance. It seemed that, unknown even to Tatiana, the Baltic nobleman had been speculating in the grain from his southern estates and had lost heavily. Alexander and the family were not ruined: the estates were only about half-mortgaged now. ‘But thank God for the countess,’ he remarked to Tatiana. ‘Without her, there’d be almost nothing to leave the children.’ They both visited the old woman regularly, and she had long ago promised them that their legacy was secure. ‘God knows,’ Alexander would say, ‘she can’t last much longer now.’

This then, in the autumn years of Catherine the Great, was the modest family life of Alexander Bobrov, whose gambling days were over.

Season of White Nights: it was on one of the first of these magical evenings that Alexander made his way over the Neva for one of his routine visits to the countess.

She had been growing rather frail of late, but she still insisted on entertaining. Her evenings were quieter now. Only a few old faithfuls came; but the eccentric old lady carried on exactly as before. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to Alexander that she must be confused about the date, for she always ignored the French Revolution. Perhaps she had even forgotten it! But then nothing, he mused, should disturb the tranquil certainty of the old lady’s temple.

When he entered the vast salon, the huge, white silk window blinds had been three-quarters lowered, but the windows were open so that the faint breeze gently ruffled the bottom folds of the blinds. Outside, the evening was light; within, the room seemed filled with paleness and half-shadow.

As he expected, there were only a few people there, mostly old men, though one or two of the younger generation had appeared. He saw Adelaide de Ronville, talking quietly with one of the old gentlemen, and they exchanged a smile. She looked a little thinner, more brittle nowadays. It was a pity that she had no lover at present. And there was the countess, in the middle of the room, sitting on her gilt chair. What a curious old creature she was, with her long dress and ribbons, still just like something out of the old French court as she sat in state to receive her guests. He bent down to kiss her, noticing that she seemed rather listless that evening. Did she like him? Even now, after all these years, it was impossible to say. One moment she would seem to smile at him; but then, a few minutes later, he would see her watching him with a look of such cynicism, even malice, in her sharp old eyes that it almost made him cringe. Who knew what she was thinking? She seemed pleased to see him now, however, spoke a few words, and then let him go.

He wandered about the room. One or two people were still drifting in and since he did not particularly feel like talking, he just stood and watched them or listened to them idly. He heard nothing of interest until he chanced to overhear one rather excitable young man, who had apparently just arrived from Moscow.

‘Who knows what you can publish nowadays?’ he was saying. ‘It’s not only the censorship. Why, they even arrested old Novikov, who ran the University Press. Is no one safe?’

‘They say he was a Freemason,’ someone objected.

‘Perhaps. But even so…’

Alexander almost sighed. What memories that name brought back. Poor old Novikov. Though it was more than three years since he had had any contact with the professor, he suddenly felt a desire to write to his old mentor, or at least his family. He questioned the young fellow from Moscow. Had any charges been preferred? Not yet, it seemed.

‘What was the professor to you?’ the man asked.

And then, after pausing only a second, Alexander heard himself say: ‘Nothing at all. I just met him once or twice, years ago.’

No, he would not write. The old man was a fool to get himself into trouble like that. He preferred to be careful. He moved away.

Some time passed. There was an air of quiet lethargy in the room, which was not unusual at Countess Turova’s these days. He managed to catch a few words with Adelaide, who complained of the heat. Then he stared out of the window at the bright evening street for some time. How boring everything was.

So he scarcely noticed that there had been a subtle change in the atmosphere of the room. People were changing position. The countess was suddenly coming to life. A little group was gathering about the old lady, drawn there, it seemed, by some new arrival. Only now did he realize that she was beckoning to him. Wearing a faint smile to hide his boredom, Alexander strolled over. No doubt they wanted him to supply some repartee. And it was only when he reached the countess, and saw the figure who was standing on her right, that his smile froze.

It was the old general: the man he had humiliated in this very place five years ago. Alexander could hardly believe it. He hadn’t even set eyes on the old man since then, and might have forgotten his existence if he had not heard that the general had acquired a surprising influence at court in recent years. Now, as he bowed politely, to his dismay he saw two things. The first was that the old man’s eyes were glittering with dislike; obviously the general had not forgotten him. The second was the look in the countess’s face, and with it came the awful realization: My God, she thinks I’m going to humiliate him all over again.

Didn’t she realize that five years had passed? Didn’t she know that the Enlightenment was out of fashion and that the general was now dangerous? But of course she didn’t. Or if she does know, she doesn’t care, he supposed. She just wants to be amused.

Already, she was smiling with happy malice. ‘Well, General,’ she began, ‘I understand you mean to burn all our books now, as well as close our theatres.’

If only there were some way out: but there was none, and the general knew it. Alexander was trapped.

What followed was worse than anything he could have imagined. The general played his hand to perfection. He understood precisely how the universe had changed since the French Revolution: he had no need to defend himself from the Enlightenment. Instead, repeating their previous argument, point by point, he calmly and bluntly stated his case, pausing after each statement to announce: ‘But Alexander Prokofievich, I know, will disagree.’

It was brilliant. The old fellow had him exactly where he wanted him. Every time he invited Alexander to take up Countess Turova’s cause, he also gave him the chance to proclaim himself against the government: and Alexander guessed that the general would be delighted to take any statement he made and repeat it, verbatim, to the highest circles at court. Once, as a further taunt, he even remarked: ‘But you, as a friend of Radishchev, will no doubt disagree.’

What could Alexander do? He squirmed. It was humiliating. Once or twice he managed, lamely, to take the countess’s part; but most of the time he was reduced to defending himself, even weakly agreeing with the general, so that the old fellow, with quiet sarcasm, was able to say several times: ‘You seem to have changed your tune, young man,’ or: ‘I’m so glad that, after all, you agree with me.’

And all the time, Alexander could see the old countess becoming more and more irritated. She gave him a stern look at first, then tried to interrupt, then began to drum with her fingers on the arm of her chair. After a time she lifted up her hand and gazed at the back of it, as though to say: ‘I am so sorry that you, too, should have to be present at this débâcle.’ Couldn’t she really see the danger he was in? Obviously not. With each exchange he could feel her growing colder until, at last, she retreated into an ominous silence.

The general saved the coup de grâce for the end, and he executed it with all the confidence of a card-player who is taking the last, inevitable tricks. He set Alexander up nicely.

‘The Enlightenment,’ he said calmly, ‘has led to these Jacobins. But perhaps Alexander Prokofievich may have something good to say about these fellows?’

‘I have nothing good to say about Jacobins,’ Alexander replied quickly.

‘Very well. Yet these same Jacobins have claimed as their hero that Monsieur Voltaire who they say inspired them. The empress, as you know, has repudiated Voltaire. Do you?’

The trap was sprung. ‘Please go on,’ the general’s eyes seemed to glint triumphantly, ‘and give me something I can use at court to break you.’ And as Alexander wondered what to say, the silence was interrupted only by Countess Turova’s voice, cold as ice: ‘Yes, Alexander Prokofievich: what would you like to say about the great Voltaire?’

‘I admire the great Voltaire,’ he said carefully, after a pause, ‘just as the empress does. As for the Jacobins, they are utterly unworthy of such a great man.’

It was a clever answer. There was nothing there for the general to use, but it seemed to mollify the countess. The grim expression on her face seemed to relax a little.

But the general had scented the kill.

‘Very good,’ he said with lethal blandness. ‘Yet since his writings have caused such trouble, would it not be better if they were removed from the eyes of those dangerous gentlemen?’ And he looked around the little group with a smile.

‘You mean censorship?’ the countess cut in sharply.

‘I do.’

‘Censor the great Voltaire?’

‘Perhaps the empress will decide to make a bonfire of all his books, my dear countess. But no doubt Alexander Prokofievich would not agree to it?’

The countess stared first at the general, then at Alexander, in horror. It was one thing to ban a few seditious tracts, even if she disapproved of it; but to burn the entire works of the great Voltaire, to cut off civilization itself… ‘Unthinkable,’ she murmured.

But it was not. How cunning the old general was. A trap within a trap. For only a few days before, a friend who frequented the court had whispered to Alexander that the enemies of the Enlightenment were secretly pushing for just such a terrible act. ‘And with the empress in her present mood, they may get their way,’ he had said. ‘Before a year is out, Voltaire may be banned.’ Clearly the general hoped Alexander did not know this. A denunciation of the idea was all he needed: then Alexander would be an enemy of the government. There was no way out. The general had trapped him and he knew it.

‘Well, Alexander Prokofievich?’ the old man gently enquired.

‘I am the loyal servant of the empress,’ Alexander lamely replied.

The general shrugged; but from the countess there was a little gasp, then a terrible silence. The little group around her watched in fascination; the old general gazed at them all with contemptuous satisfaction. Then at last Countess Turova spoke.

‘I am interested to learn, Alexander Prokofievich, that you would burn the works of Voltaire. I had not known this before.’ She stared down at her hands thoughtfully. ‘I am sure that your wife must be waiting for you. So we will bid you goodnight.’

It was a dismissal. He bowed his head, and left.

A few days later, when Alexander called at her house, he was told that she was not receiving. Two days after that, when Tatiana went at her usual time, she was told the countess was not at home. A third time, the servant at the door informed Alexander insolently that he was not to call again; and that very day, he received the following ominous message from Adelaide de Ronville:

Alexander looked at the letter with dull horror. The children’s inheritance – gone. The entire business was insane, but he knew the old lady too well to think she would change her mind. He had insulted her idol; that was all she knew, or cared about. He showed the letter to Tatiana, remarking with shame: ‘See what your foolish husband has done.’

She would not let him take the blame, however. ‘The old woman is mad, that’s all,’ she said firmly, and even in his distress, Alexander smiled to himself as he embraced her. How much closer they were nowadays.

But what could be done? The first day he wrote the countess a letter. It was returned. On the second, Tatiana wrote to her. That, too, was returned. Early on the morning of the third came a message from Adelaide.

Alexander sighed. What was the point? There was nothing to be done now. Sadly he told Tatiana: ‘It’s no good. I’m afraid we’ve lost it.’ The stupidity of the whole business disgusted him. Miserably he retired to his study to think.

Yet even at this moment of crisis, he did not despair. Perhaps the shock even gave him strength. If the inheritance was gone, he must think of some other way to get money. All morning, grimly determined, he pondered this question. His aims were modest: the days of Bobrov the gambler were long over. He would pay off his debts and put a little money by. It might take years and sometimes be humiliating, he did not care. He would make a start, right away.

And so it was that, at midday, he came out, kissed his wife, and ordered his best carriage and horses.

He was going to Empress Catherine’s summer palace.

It was in the early afternoon that, unbeknownst to Alexander, Tatiana and her children set out in a modest hired carriage, and crossed the Neva to Vasilevsky Island. When they arrived at Countess Turova’s house, however, it was not to her door that they went.

It had not been easy for Tatiana. But the Frenchwoman is the only person, she reasoned, who might get me in to see the countess. If it meant she must suffer the small humiliation of asking her husband’s former mistress to save her, so be it. And when the children asked who they were going to see, she told them: ‘An old friend of mine.’

Her plan was quite simple. Once the countess knew she was in the house, surely she would see her. And when the old woman saw the children, could it fail to soften her? Then Tatiana would explain everything. It was a mother’s plan.

And so it was that an astonished Adelaide de Ronville found herself confronted with three little children and their mother who, staring with clear, blue eyes straight into hers, declared simply: ‘We are in your hands.’

‘Mon Dieu.’ Adelaide gazed at the children. Alexander’s children. She realized, to her surprise, that she had never seen them before. Then she looked quickly at this simple, strong woman, their mother. And because it had happened so unexpectedly, leaving her no time to prepare herself, she experienced a sudden, terrible sense of loss and loneliness so that, for a moment, she found she could not speak.

‘Wait here,’ she said after a few moments. ‘I promise nothing, but I will do what I can.’

She was gone some time. While she waited, Tatiana looked around her curiously. Though she had little understanding of what she saw, she perceived that there was something about the subtle arrangement of the Frenchwoman’s salon that was charming in a way that no room of her own could ever be. Yet what was it? Some of the hangings were old and worn. The colours were muted compared with the bright blues and heavy greens of the Bobrov house. Yet this, it seems, is what he likes, she realized. That the art of Adelaide’s seduction lay in the mind, that the joy of the room’s restful silence was that it evoked a whole civilization – said, in effect: ‘In this house there are countless rooms in which your imagination may wander’ – never occurred to her.

She sat there, holding her children, for nearly an hour. Then Adelaide returned, looking grim.

‘She won’t see you. I’m sorry.’

And this, too, Tatiana was not able to understand.

The Catherine Palace. The huge park containing the imperial summer quarters lay only a short distance to the south-west of St Petersburg. Alexander had reached it in under two hours. He loved the place.

For if anything symbolized the cosmopolitan era of eighteenth-century Russia, it was this building. Like the huge Winter Palace, it had been principally designed by the great architect Rastrelli in Empress Elizabeth’s reign. It was the Russian Versailles. The ornate, rococo façade of the central section was three storeys high, and stretched for well over three hundred yards. Pilasters, caryatids, windows and pediments were picked out in white; the walls were painted blue. At each end, a little cluster of onion domes served to emphasize even further the incredible horizontal line of the place. Catherine had abolished some of the formal gardens for an English park, laid out by John Bush. She had also decided to replace the gilt on the domes with a duller but more sensible paint. ‘But God knows,’ people would remark, ‘there’s enough of Rastrelli’s gold left inside.’

There was indeed. For here was European elegance blended with true Russian sumptuousness. There were huge halls of multicoloured marbles, rooms decorated with jasper and agate; there was even, unique in all the world, a room whose walls were entirely made of amber. The magnificent parquet floors used dozens of woods. And everywhere was the gold that Rastrelli loved, set off with alabaster, lapis, deep reds and dazzling blues, in such brilliant profusion that even visitors from the greatest courts in Europe gasped. How should it be otherwise when this was the capital of the vast Eurasian empire, which could take such treasures from lands which stretched from the Baltic shores all the way to the desert and mountains of the fabulous orient?

The Russian Versailles. Yet it was profoundly different from the great French palace. For where the French King had laid out his vast, proud palace and park with a cold classical geometry, this gorgeous Russian palace was essentially simple. It was a long, brightly painted house in the forest. That was all. Despite its magnificence, there was a charming humility about the place, as though to say: Man is still dwarfed, under this sparkling northern sky and this ever-receding horizon, here at the corner of the endless plain. In this, the rococo Catherine Palace was still entirely Russian.

‘State Councillor Bobrov.’ They gave him directions immediately, and Alexander entered boldly. Yet all the same, he could not help feeling a sense of mortification as he made his way through the huge, gilded halls. With every step, a little voice, long smothered, seemed to say: ‘This should have been yours, not his.’

For the man he had come to see was young Platon Zubov – the Empress Catherine’s new lover.

How inscrutable, indeed, was fate. The very position he had once aspired to occupy now belonged to a handsome young man in his early twenties, who was vain, shallow and ambitious. He was so obvious about it all. Nobody liked him. Yet the whole court sensed – perhaps the empress also knew – that in the autumn of her life, this young lover would be her last.

And this was the young man whose favour Alexander had, for some time, been trying to cultivate. It had not been pleasant. But what else do you do, when you’ve got a family, he told himself. A little while ago he had actually been very useful to the young favourite, hoping to build up a debt of gratitude with him in the future. Now, in this present crisis, it seemed time to cash in the debt at once. That was what he was counting on today.

The pavilion rooms in which the young man was holding court had been built onto one end of the palace, together with a long gallery, by Catherine’s Scottish architect Cameron. It was beautifully designed – smaller in scale but in the style of a sumptuous Roman palace, with a Roman bath house underneath. Before the doorway of one of the rooms stood a crowd of people: venerable courtiers, rich landowners, important military men. Three years ago they would not have looked at Zubov: now they waited meekly for admittance to the favourite. It should have been his – Alexander shut out the thought and sent in his name. As the door opened, he heard laughter inside.

He was only kept waiting an hour before they let him in.

The room was splendid, done in Pompeian style, with severe Roman furniture. Young Zubov himself stood in the middle of the crowded room, smiling. For his amusement, he had dressed himself in a Roman toga that day: and, indeed, with his classically perfect face, the vain young man looked very well in this dress. Holding his hand was a monkey.

‘My dear Alexander Prokofievich!’ His large eyes seemed surprised but delighted to see the modest State Councillor. ‘What brings you here?’

This was the moment. Great men easily forget they owe favours, but Bobrov did not give him the slightest chance. ‘Why naturally,’ he replied, ‘I came here to congratulate you upon our triumph in Poland.’ And Zubov positively beamed at him.

Poland. If the great Potemkin had given Catherine the Crimea, it was young Zubov’s intention to have his name linked to another important addition to the Russian empire. For fate had given him Poland.

If the great feudal magnates of Poland and her partner Lithuania had advanced like a steady tide into ancient Russia in those centuries when she was struggling with the Tatars, that tide had long since ebbed away. Moreover, Russia’s former rival was still ruled by its famous diet – the sejm – that hopeless body of magnates which, having elected a king, could frustrate any course of action by the veto of a single member. Poland’s weakness had suited Russia very well. Twenty years ago, had not Catherine been able calmly to take another bite out of its borderlands and then have her former lover elected as a puppet king? By what folly then had the Poles, just a year ago, declared a new constitution which allowed for a normal voting system in the diet and a hereditary, constitutional monarchy? The poor King had even been stupid enough to endorse it. Did her former lover really suppose that Catherine would tolerate his ruling over a strong and stable Poland on her borders?

Her reaction was instant. ‘They are revolutionaries – Jacobins!’ she declared. It was nonsense, of course: the reformers were conservative monarchists. But rulers are entitled to lie. Something would have to be done.

Here then was the opportunity – for Zubov to make his name, and for Russia to enlarge her mighty empire. While many, including the great fading star, Potemkin, recommended caution, the new favourite urged: ‘Europe’s powers are distracted by the war with revolutionary France. They’ve no time to worry about Poland. Now is the time to invade her.’ That spring, with Potemkin dead, Zubov had got his way. Even now, following plans he had meticulously drawn up, a Russian force was sweeping easily across the Polish plains.

‘My dear Alexander Prokofievich,’ Zubov now declared, ‘you have timed your visit perfectly. I have just heard this morning that Vilnius is ours.’ The ancient Lithuanian capital. Another Baltic province to add to the lands of Latvia and Estonia that Peter the Great had secured for Russia. ‘By the end of the year,’ the young man went on, ‘Poland will be half its present size. We’ll give a piece to Prussia and keep the rest for ourselves.’ It would certainly be a triumph.

‘I share your joy,’ Alexander said carefully, in a voice which, once again, gently reminded him that a favour was due.

‘Ah, yes.’ Zubov looked at Alexander thoughtfully. ‘You were rather useful to us, weren’t you?’ Alexander bowed. ‘Of course, I remember it all.’ And the young man gave him a smile of total understanding.

It had not been anything to be proud of. At a time when Zubov was still unsure of prevailing on the subject of Poland, Bobrov in his modest way had done useful work for him in the bureaucracy. In doing so, he had deliberately betrayed his old patron, the sick Potemkin. He was still secretly ashamed of it. And all this Zubov perfectly understood.

‘So,’ the favourite said quietly, ‘tell me what you want.’

It was not much: just one of those many positions which existed throughout the cumbersome Russian administration and which carried a handsome salary for minimal duties. It would not make him rich, but it would supplement his income nicely and let him save some money until some better chance arose. He had rather despised these sinecures before, but this was not the time to be too particular. Zubov let him finish. Then he turned to his monkey.

Alexander had heard of the monkey. It was Zubov’s favourite pet and was often present at audiences. It was said that important courtiers had been sent out of the room because the monkey did not like them. He was not sure what kind of monkey this little object with a long, curling tail might be, but he eyed it rather nervously.

‘Alexander Prokofievich wants a present,’ Zubov said to the little brown creature. ‘What do you think?’

Alexander held his breath.

What happened next took place so fast that Alexander never actually saw it. All he knew was that the little creature must have sprung – for suddenly the monkey was on his chest, its arms clasped round his neck, and its face, like that of a tiny old man, pressed close to his – and that the force of its landing was so unexpected that it made him topple and fall with a crash on to the marble floor.

The whole room burst out laughing. The monkey was still pressing its face to his, squealing excitedly, opening and closing its little mouth so that Alexander wondered if it was going to bite him. He struggled to get up, slipped and fell. The little creature was all over him again, tugging at his ears, pushing its nose against his. And above it all he could hear, almost squealing in mirth, Zubov’s voice.

‘He likes you, Bobrov! He loves you!’

And then, suddenly, silence. Alexander turned his head: legs in silk stockings, uniforms all around, and everything motionless. He looked up; and now he saw, standing in the centre of the room, a short, stout figure in a simple, pale silk robe, rather like a dressing gown.

It was Catherine.

Awkwardly, scarlet with humiliation and trying to straighten his clothes, he rose and bowed. The monkey had disappeared somewhere. He was conscious only of the circle of twenty or so courtiers watching him, and of the empress, whose face was like a mask.

So at last, after all, he had met her face to face. Humiliating though it all was, he looked at her with curiosity. This was the woman whose bed he had hoped to share.

Her face was still fine. The brow was noble. But her short, stout body looked coarser and flabbier than he had realized, and some of her teeth were clearly missing. Her golden autumn had shed nearly all its leaves, and she knew that nothing could disguise it. Alexander gazed at her, and did not envy Platon Zubov any more.

‘Who is he?’ The empress’s voice cut coldly, authoritatively, through the silence.

‘Alexander Prokofievich Bobrov,’ Zubov answered, and gave Alexander an encouraging smile. ‘He came to ask for an appointment,’ he added kindly.

Catherine looked at Alexander, apparently searching the large storehouse of her mind for scraps of information, saying nothing while she did so. She might be getting old, perhaps unwell, but her prominent, calm blue eyes were still rather alarming. For years Alexander had vowed that when they met he would astonish her: now, in her presence, after this ridiculous beginning, he was idiotically speechless. He felt himself growing hot. And then he saw a faint recognition in her eyes.

‘You are State Councillor Bobrov?’

He bowed. Perhaps Potemkin had spoken of him formerly and she remembered. She must, at least, be aware of his family’s ancient services. Was it possible that, after all, his hour had come? God knows I have deserved it, he thought. Then she spoke.

‘Aren’t you a relation of that tiresome and ridiculous Countess Turova?’

It was not a question. It was a cold, contemptuous accusation. At this signal of royal displeasure, it seemed to him that he could feel the whole room grow instantly cold towards him.

‘I am distantly related. I’m afraid she is rather absurd,’ he said lamely.

‘Quite. Now I know who you are.’

And with that she turned her back and began to walk out of the room. Just before the doorway, and without turning her head, she called: ‘Come, Platon.’ Then she swept out.

Zubov started after her quickly; from somewhere the monkey reappeared and loped along behind him. At the door, Zubov turned, gave a regretful little shrug to Alexander, and then suddenly grinned. ‘Oh, well, Alexander Prokofievich,’ he called out, ‘at least my monkey liked you! Goodbye.’ Then he was gone, and all the room was laughing.

It was over. He would never, as long as he lived, get any court favour. And why? Because the empress associated him with Countess Turova, and her stupid views.

My God, he thought, I might as well have kept on the right side of the old witch and her damned Voltaire.

Sadly, his head down, he left. He was broken. As he made his way back to where his carriage was waiting, he scarcely noticed the old general going into the palace, with a faint smile on his face.

All the way back to St Petersburg he brooded. He was finished. He could see it all. They would move to a smaller house. There would be almost nothing for the children. Even his most modest hopes had been dashed.

Perhaps I should just go and live at Russka, he thought. There would be nothing to do, but it would be cheap. ‘A fellow from Riazan,’ he muttered. That was the popular phrase for a country bumpkin. Twice during the journey back he put his head between his knees, in a gesture of despair.

It was eight o’clock in the evening when he reached St Petersburg: the bright haze in the streets would continue, growing gradually paler until midnight when the strange, electric luminosity of the White Night would begin. Shortly he would have to face Tatiana with the news of his failure. As his carriage approached the Second Admiralty quarter however, an idea occurred to him and he ordered the coachman not to stop but to continue across the Neva to Vasilevsky Island. Once there, he told him to wait by the Strelka, the tip of the island, then he proceeded on foot. He would have one last try. After all, he had nothing to lose.

The great house of Countess Turova was quiet. It might have been deserted. It was as though, having no wish to take part in that interminable, pale summer night, it had retreated into itself, behind its large, heavy and slightly dusty façade. Its big, silent pillars and their deep recesses made Alexander think of a mausoleum or a government office on a Sunday. Yet he knew the old woman was in there somewhere.

He approached discreetly, keeping out of sight of the main door where some lackey might observe him, and made instead for the little side entrance that led to Madame de Ronville’s quarters. Her note had said she would be out at the Ivanovs’ that evening. So much the better. He had no need to involve her, only to get access to the building. When he reached the door he pulled out the ring of keys which he always kept with him. Although they were no longer lovers, he had never been able to bring himself to part With the key to that little side door. He let himself in, and went up the stairs.

How still it was. Inside the house there was not a sound – not even a scratch or a whisper. He passed through Adelaide’s rooms. The evening sunlight outside softly lit up the tapestries and damasks. There was a faint smell of roses in the salon. A moment later he passed into the main body of the house. Since this, too, was silent he guessed that the old lady had probably retired early. He made his way carefully up the little staircase to the landing, and paused. The door of the maid’s room was closed: obviously she had not come up yet. But the door of the countess’s bedroom was open. He listened. Was she there?

Then he heard her. At first he thought she must be talking to someone, she was muttering with such conviction, but after a few moments, hearing no answering voice, he moved into the doorway. Then he was sure: the countess was muttering to herself. What was she saying? He could not make it out but suddenly the thought crossed his mind – perhaps the old woman was going a little mad. Mad or not, it was time to act. Calmly he stepped into the room.

She was reading, sitting up in bed, just as she had been that night five years ago. She looked older and frailer now; her hair, tied with ribbons, was getting thin. Her shoulders, slightly exposed, showed the bones sharply through the sagging skin. She was propped up on pillows, leaning slightly forward, following the text of a newspaper by holding a magnifying glass close to the page, and muttering irritably to herself while she did so.

She started with a little cry when she saw him. He saw her swallow with alarm. But then, quickly collecting herself, she noisily slammed down the newspaper on the bedclothes and hissed furiously: ‘What do you want? How dare you come here!’

He tried to look soothing.

‘I wanted to speak to you, Daria Mikhailovna, but,’ he gave a wry smile, ‘you would not let me in.’

‘Get out.’

He wondered if anyone could hear them, but stood his ground. It was all or nothing now.

‘Daria Mikhailovna, permit me at least, and with great respect, to say that you have done me an injustice. And even if you are unfairly angry with me, do not, I beg you, destroy my poor wife and children, who are innocent.’

‘You sent them to pester me already once today and I sent them away,’ she retorted sharply. ‘Now leave my house.’

His wife and children there? What was she talking about? ‘I did no such thing,’ he replied truthfully.

But the old woman’s attention seemed to wander now. She began to mumble, ‘First one comes, then the other, pretending they don’t know. Liars! They’ll get nothing from me.’ Could it be, Alexander wondered, that the countess really was becoming senile? The thought had just formed when she abruptly hissed: ‘Or their children. Filthy creatures! Snakes!’

This last was said with such vehemence, in a manner so insulting, that he could not help tensing with anger.

‘You do not understand, Daria Mikhailovna,’ he went on patiently. ‘You are angry with me but I assure you, no one admires the great Voltaire more than I do. But at the moment, my dear Daria Mikhailovna, even those of us who think as you do cannot speak. The empress won’t hear of it. I’m a State Councillor. Surely you know that I have to be careful.’

He paused, wondering if she had understood. For a moment she did not reply. She stared down at the newspaper that lay before her. Then she looked up at him, with contempt, and spat out a single word.

‘Deceitful!’

What a foolish, vicious old woman she was. And now she continued muttering, though whether to herself, or addressing her remarks to him, it was impossible to tell. ‘He says one thing to this one, another to that. Two-faced. You can’t trust him an inch.’ And just because, in his heart, Alexander was ashamed of the way he had deserted his old patron Potemkin, and because it was true that he had altered his views to the prevailing wind, the crazy old woman’s accusations made him all the more angry. First the hot drive out to the Summer Palace, then his utter humiliation, now this.

‘You don’t understand. I assure you…’ he began.

But she cut in: ‘You think I don’t know you for what you are. This is the second time you’ve come sneaking in here, you snake.’

‘I most certainly have not,’ he retorted hotly.

‘Liar!’ She fell silent, then continued her colloquy with herself. ‘Oh, yes, I saw him creeping in here in the middle of the night like a wolf. Thief! Thinks he can just come in here and mock me. Blackguard! Picking up my books, dancing about in front of me like a lunatic. Snake! Viper!’ She spat out the words.

My God! Then she had not been asleep that far-off night. Her eyes had been open because she was awake. It had never occurred to Alexander that the old lady had been brooding secretly about his foolish nocturnal visit for the last five years. And how on earth could he explain it now? ‘Who do you think you are?’ she suddenly demanded furiously. ‘You think you can deceive me too? Liar!’ she rasped.

He was shattered, yet furious. He was not a liar!

‘All this because I said a few words about Voltaire! What about my children – your own kinsmen? You mean to disinherit them?’

‘You mean to disinherit them?’ She mimicked his words with surprising accuracy and a vicious contempt. ‘I care nothing for your children. Serpent’s brood. Let them starve! Now get out of here. Traitor!’

It was too much. It was cruel beyond reason. The rage and frustration of the day, perhaps of his whole life, suddenly welled up and flooded over.

‘You old witch!’ he cried out. ‘You stupid, senile old hag! What do you know about anything? Damn your Voltaire! Damn you too!’ He raised his fists above his head, tightly clenched. ‘My God, I’ll kill you!’ And he took a step towards her.

It was a gesture of frustration. He had meant, perhaps, to shock her. He hardly knew himself. But now to his horror he saw her shudder, watched her eyes open very wide, then roll up. Then she fell back on her pillow.

He stood still. It was very quiet. He glanced at the door, expecting to see servants, but there was nobody. It suddenly occurred to him that in that huge house, the servants on other floors had probably not heard them. He looked back at her. Her mouth had fallen open, making a small, rather pathetic little O. Her few yellow teeth seemed very long, like a rat’s. She did not seem to be breathing.

Trembling, he went over to her. What should he do? Gingerly he felt her pulse. He could feel nothing. He continued to gaze at her nervously for some time before he fully realized that she was dead.

Because he was so afraid of her, a simple and obvious fact had never entered his mind – that the frail old woman had been terrified of him. He must have given her a heart attack. He crossed himself.

And only after several moments more, as he stood there wondering what to do next, did the true significance of what had happened occur to him.

‘Praise be to God,’ he whispered. She was dead – and she hadn’t yet altered her Will. ‘I’m saved after all.’

Cautiously he went to the door and looked out on to the landing. Everything was quiet, just as it had been before. He glanced back once more at the figure of the countess. She had not moved. He went out, descended the staircase to the main body of the house, then slipped quietly along the passage to Madame de Ronville’s quarters.

A few minutes later, he was letting himself out of the little street door. No one saw him. He locked the door behind him. Then, walking swiftly, he made his way through the tenuous late evening light to the Strelka where his carriage was waiting.

It was just as his carriage was rolling over the bridge towards Peter’s Square that, in the great house on Vasilevsky Island, Countess Turova’s eyes fluttered and slowly opened.

The dead faint into which she had fallen had lasted some time. She had, indeed, been lost to the world and had herself no idea how long she had been unconscious. Nor was it surprising that Alexander should have believed her dead: for having little experience of old people he did not know that their pulses often become almost impossible to feel. For some while she lay very still, collecting her strength. She called for her maid, but obviously the woman was still downstairs somewhere. Her face puckered up into an expression of disgust and she muttered something to herself. Carefully, she levered herself round, so that her legs hung over the side of the bed, and slowly lowered them to the floor. Holding the bedside table, she made sure that she could walk. Then she went over to the little writing table. Feeling in one of the drawers, she pulled out a piece of paper and looked at it thoughtfully; she had no idea what it meant, but she was sure it meant something.

It was the letter Alexander had unknowingly dropped from his pocket when he had done his foolish little dance in her room that December night, five long years before. And it was signed – ‘Colovion’.

Then, unaided, Countess Turova started to make her way towards the stairs.

Alexander could not sleep that night; perhaps it was the excitement of what had passed, or perhaps it was merely the season, but a little after midnight he set out from his house and began to walk.

There were others about, in that pale gloaming: young couples, even children, walking along the broad embankments of the Neva or beside the silent canals with their little bridges, enjoying the warm magic of those early hours. Sometimes a little party would go by, singing and laughing in the glimmering greyness.

Alexander made his way to the embankment. Slowly he walked along, across the great square where Peter’s mighty statue reared up, past the long, bare walls of the Admiralty, and out on to the broad expanse before the Winter Palace and its extension, the Hermitage. On his left lay the wide pale expanse of the Neva. On the Strelka, in mid-river, a light was glowing. Now and then, people passed by like shadows. And as he stood gazing north-wards, the little flashes of the Aurora, like silent lightning, ignited past the horizon, over the Arctic wastes.

Unreal season. Unreal city. As he looked back over the last ten years of his life, and thought of the strange events of that day, it seemed to Alexander that his whole existence had been like a tiny walk-on part on this huge St Petersburg stage-set. For wasn’t it all just a play? Wasn’t poor Empress Catherine with her young lovers a pathetic personal sham? Wasn’t this huge city, built on a northern marsh, with its Italian façades gazing over an icebound wasteland, another kind of improbable deception? The city is built on wooden piles, he thought. One day they will rot and it will all fall back into the marshes. Wasn’t the enlightened noble class to which he belonged the greatest sham of all – speaking of Voltaire, yet ruling as it did over a vast empire of villages and serfs, stuck in the Middle Ages, or even the Dark Ages, if truth be told? Was Peter the Great’s vision of Russia as a great Continental Empire – wasn’t the boundless energy and ambition of the Bronze Horseman – just a wild dream, impossible ever of being achieved? As he stared over the huge river and then looked back at the great open space beside the palace, he suddenly had an overwhelming sense that the vast Russian land of marsh and forest might advance, at any moment, into the emptiness of this unnatural city.

‘Why, the whole city,’ he murmured aloud, ‘is just a huge Potemkin village – a façade. And if so, what has my life been – my gamble for power, my love of display, my desire for earthly and even heavenly rewards? Was it all a great illusion?’

It seemed to him, at that moment, that it was so. As he slowly made his way home, revolving this thought in his mind, he would glance up from time to time to notice a piece of broken-off stucco here, or the rotting bricks on the corners of the houses there, and murmur to himself: ‘Yes, it is vanity. All is vanity.’

And so deep in contemplation of this grand futility was Alexander that, returning at last in the early morning, he did not even notice the little carriage standing in front of his house, or the group of men who stood waiting to receive him. So that he looked up in astonishment as one of them stepped forward and said to him quietly: ‘State Councillor Bobrov, you are to accompany us. You are under arrest.’

The cell was pitch black. There was no light from any source.

He did not know how long he had been there but since the door had half opened, twice, and a hand had pushed in a crust of bread and a small pitcher of water, he supposed it must be between one and two days.

The cell was very small. If he stood with his back to the heavy door and reached out his right hand and his left, he could place the palms flat against the two walls. From this position he discovered he could take two full paces before his head hit the wall opposite. The first few hours he thought there was a rat in one corner; but now he was not sure. Perhaps it had found a hole somewhere and gone away. For this was the dreaded Peter and Paul Fortress. He wondered whether the cell was above or below the water level. Below, he thought.

Only one thing puzzled him. Why had they arrested him? For what crime? The arresting officer had not told him – probably had not known. And since they had thrown him in here, no one had spoken to him. There was only one thing to do: keep calm.

Another day passed. No one came. He wondered if they would leave him there to die. Then, at the end of the third day, the door opened and they pulled him out, and a few minutes later he found himself standing, rather unsteadily, in a large room, blinking at the pain of the light, and becoming vaguely aware of the fact that, after his confinement, he was stinking. There was a single guard in the room and when Alexander asked him what was going on he replied gruffly: ‘You’ll be questioned.’

‘Oh. By whom?’

‘Don’t you know?’ The guard grinned. ‘By Sheshkovsky himself, of course.’ Then he laughed. ‘You’ll talk.’

And now, despite his determination to be calm, Alexander trembled. Everyone knew about Sheshkovsky – the most feared inquisitor in all Russia. The great interrogator had easily broken poor Radishchev, the radical writer. They said that his victims were lucky if they lived. Yet, Alexander reminded himself, I am a noble. By law he can’t torture me. He can’t give me the knout. The court had to strip him of his noble status before he could suffer those indignities.

He was still thinking nervously about these matters when he felt hands forcing him to sit on a bench. A table was put in front of him, with a lamp on it. Then, a moment later, he became aware of another figure in the room – somewhere out in the shadows, past the bright lamp – a figure he could not see but whose voice he could hear.

‘So,’ said the voice quietly, ‘tell me about Colovion.’

In the three weeks that followed, Alexander Bobrov was often confused. Some days they would leave him alone in his cell; but usually they would wait until he was falling asleep and then drag him back to the lighted room and shine the lamp in his eyes, or force him to move about so that he could not sleep.

His inquisitor came at irregular intervals. At first Alexander thought this was a ploy, but after a time it seemed to him that the inquisitor had other business elsewhere, and that he, Alexander, might be of only marginal interest. Yet each time he asked why they were keeping him there, the reply was indirect, and therefore all the more frightening: ‘I think you know, State Councillor,’ or, ‘Perhaps you would like to tell me, Alexander Prokofievich.’

They did not use torture: they did not threaten him with the knout. Yet no torture, he realized, can be worse than never being allowed to sleep. As for the interrogator, Alexander understood now why he was so feared. It’s not what he does to your body, he thought. It’s what he does to your soul.

For gradually, session after session, day after day, the inquisitor was taking over his mind.

It was a subtle process. When, for instance, he had denied all knowledge of Colovion, the interrogator had not contradicted him. But towards the end of the session, quietly, imperturbably, he had let Alexander know by a few words that he knew about the professor and the Rosicrucian circle. So he had probably been interrogating the professor too, Alexander realized. Yet how did he know about their connection? There were no written records. Had the professor talked? Perhaps. It began to occur to him that the interrogator might not be seeking information from him at all, but only trying to discover how much he would lie.

It was the same when they discussed other matters. His interrogator wanted to know about the articles he had written, years ago, on subjects like the emancipation of serfs. Yet those articles had been anonymous. No one knew who had written them. How was it then that, each time he denied having done so, the invisible voice would quietly accept his assertion and then, with incredible accuracy, recite a line or two that he had written perhaps an entire decade before?

Slowly, as the process continued and the gentle, reasonable voice, never accusing, allowed him to see, again and again, that he knew the truth, Alexander, to his own surprise, began to feel guilty.

By the seventh day, it seemed to Alexander that the interrogator knew everything there was to know about him. By the fourteenth day, it seemed to his confused brain that the interrogator knew more about him than he did himself. By the twentieth day, Alexander knew that the interrogator was all-knowing, god-like. What reason was there to try to hide anything from this voice – this kindly voice, which was only helping him to open his heart, and then at last to sleep?

On the twenty-first day, he talked.

It was a cool, damp October morning when Alexander Bobrov left the Peter and Paul Fortress, with his hands and feet manacled, and sitting in the back of a little open cart. In the front sat the driver and a soldier with a musket. There were two outriders.

The sky was grey. The waters of the Neva were high, and above the Admiralty he could see the little flags flying which warned that there was a risk of flooding. For it was not unusual, at such a season, for the waters of the Gulf of Finland to sweep in past Vasilevsky Island and take over the cellars and even the streets of the city of Peter.

Strangely, Alexander felt at peace with the world. Though manacled, he sat quite calmly, almost cheerfully, and watched the great city go by. His clothes were in tatters, his head bare, yet it did not seem to concern him unduly. In the distance, across the river, he caught a glimpse of the Bronze Horseman. There was the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. The empress and her lover Zubov were in there somewhere, no doubt. Good luck to them.

It was odd: he had lost everything, yet he actually felt more comfortable now than he had done in years. Here in a cart, his head bare to the elements, he felt absolved of all earthly cares. Perhaps it was personal to Alexander, or perhaps it was a trait often found in Russia, but he realized that he only felt truly himself at life’s extremes. It was as though he had never really felt comfortable when he was striving for mediocrity, as he had been these last few years. Give me a palace, he considered, or a monk’s cell.

Anyway, he had been lucky. He had only been sentenced to ten years.

He had learned of it the day before. For several weeks now, he had been in a small cell with a window. He had not been allowed any visitors, nor any news of the outside world. He still did not even know what crimes he had been charged with. Then, that morning, the interrogator had come and told him his sentence.

‘Your trial went well,’ he blandly announced. Like other such trials, it had been a brief, informal affair at which the accused himself had not been present. ‘The empress had wanted to give you fifteen years. That’s what we gave your friend the professor. But your wife wrote to the empress – a very fine letter, I must say – and so we’ve been lenient. In fact, you’ve been even luckier than that. But I’ll let your wife tell you about it.’

Tatiana had come a few hours later. It was only now that he learned that the countess was still alive. ‘But she has told everyone in St Petersburg that you tried to murder her,’ Tatiana explained. ‘She went to the police that very night and told them to arrest you. And then,’ she paused, ‘it seems there were other charges.’ She looked at him anxiously. ‘They say you were a Freemason. I do not understand.’

He sighed. He thought he was beginning to.

The crackdown of Catherine the Great on the Freemasons in the summer of 1792 was sudden. It was probably caused by Novikov when, under questioning, he had inadvertently revealed the existence of the secret inner order of Rosicrucians. Historical evidence shows that, even afterwards, the authorities had only a very imperfect idea of how the order worked. Since the Rosicrucians always burned all their correspondence, the full membership was never established. The links to Grand Duke Paul were never proved; the international network only vaguely understood. But the empress was adamant. The order was secret, its members probably radical; they might be plotting with her son. She trusted no one, nowadays. They were to be eliminated.

The business, it must be said, was planned intelligently. The men with important connections, like the prince, were to be quietly exiled to their estates. The bookseller who had sold Masonic tracts would be arrested and let out with a terrible warning. The professor was to be made an example of. ‘But I wish,’ the empress had declared, ‘we had someone to make an example of from St Petersburg as well as Moscow.’

It was most fortunate therefore, on the very eve of the crackdown, that the inquisitor Sheshkovsky should have come to her with the surprising news: ‘I think we may have discovered just the man we need. Moreover,’ he added, ‘it seems the fellow’s a dangerous radical.’ And the empress, when she heard who it was, had been delighted.

But how, Alexander wondered, had they known so much about him? Tatiana soon supplied the answers.

‘Madame de Ronville told me what was happening,’ she explained. ‘She came to see me after you were arrested. It seems there was a letter of some kind that the countess had – from Professor Novikov the Freemason. She didn’t know what it was, but she showed it to the authorities. She was using anything she could find to have you prosecuted.’

Alexander could imagine it.

‘Then a man called Sheshkovsky went to see her. Do you know him?’

‘Yes, I know him.’

‘He spent a whole afternoon talking to her. She showed him a lot of articles you had written, years ago. He was very interested.’

‘I expect he was.’ He could imagine the scene: the old countess and the skilful interrogator. How easy it would have been for the inquisitor to get the information he wanted out of her. How the subtle fellow must have smiled to himself, and no wonder he had seemed to know everything!

And yet… even as Alexander considered the matter, a new and even grimmer thought suddenly came into his mind. Had the interrogator cunningly coaxed the information out of the foolish old lady, or, in a terrible act of irony, was it possible that she had done it deliberately: revealed those articles to him – the very articles she had praised and which represented her own, most passionate views – knowing that they would seal Alexander’s fate?

He would never know.

‘Yes,’ he said sadly. ‘She had her revenge.’

‘There is one piece of good news though,’ Tatiana told him. ‘You are not to be imprisoned in a fortress, like the professor. Guess where your prison is?’

Alexander had looked blank.

‘You’re to be imprisoned in the monastery,’ she smiled. ‘At Russka.’

And so it was, he reflected, as the little cart bumped out of the city on that chilly October morning, that Empress Catherine had, in the end, found a use for Bobrov the gambler after all.

1796

How slow, how quiet, was the passing of the years.

He would listen to the bell that tolled the monks to prayer, and by this means would always know the hour. Yet sometimes it seemed to Alexander that the little monastery was half-empty: one day, he fancied, he might wake up to silence – which would tell him that the remaining monks were gone, leaving him alone in his cell with only his strange companion.

The cell was quite spacious; its walls were painted white, and there was a high, barred window. With a small jump he could catch hold of the bars, pull himself up and look out of the top of the monastery wall at one of the corner towers, also painted white. So he could see the outside world – the sky at least.

They let him have books, but no writing materials. One of the monks gave him a book of psalms. Every month Tatiana, who spent most of the time at Russka, was allowed to visit him, and usually she brought the children. Indeed, if I were ready to be a hermit, I should almost be contented, he thought.

And so the years passed quietly – almost, one could say, untroubled – but for certain thoughts that occurred to him by day; and at night, by a certain dream.

How strange it was to be so near one of his own estates, yet so far. The place was much the same as in former times – and yet it was not. The monastery, certainly, was only a shadow of its former self. When he had visited it as a young boy, it had still owned the lands around as far as his own estate of Dirty Place. But since Catherine had taken over all the Church lands, the peasants who worked them all belonged to the state now. The monastery was no longer the local landed power, but only a rather forlorn collection of religious buildings, set in the midst of state-owned fields. As a young man he had welcomed the change. ‘Let the Church stick to religion,’ he had said. But now, even cut off in his cell, he could sense the different atmosphere in the place, and he was not so sure. Part of Old Russia had gone from the land; the monastery had been hollowed out, into an empty shell.

It was never a prison before, either, Alexander reflected. But twenty years ago, Catherine had decided that the little Russka monastery would be a convenient place to keep prisoners awaiting trial, and it had been used that way ever since. Nowadays, however, there were just two prisoners, both kept in the same cell: Alexander and his curious companion.

Was it chance, or some malicious afterthought of the empress, that had caused Alexander to be put in a cell with this fellow? Probably the latter.

He was very tall and gaunt, a little older than Alexander, with a long, straggling black beard and deepset black eyes that gazed out from their hollows with a kind of fervent intensity. It had seemed strange, therefore, given the complete absence of physical likeness, that he should have announced to Alexander, on their first day together, that he was none other than Catherine’s husband, the late Tsar Peter.

He was entirely harmless. At some time the empress must have decided he was a nuisance and locked him up. Perhaps he had been forgotten. Who was he? Alexander guessed he was a state peasant from somewhere in the north. The fellow could not read or write and mostly sat there, staring fervently at the wall: occasionally he would speak, earnestly, about Holy Russia, and denounce the empress as an atheist and a harlot. When he did so, Alexander would quietly nod and say: ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ In his own mind he called the man, like the pretenders of olden times, the False Peter. They shared the cell quite peaceably.

The thoughts that disturbed his peace of mind by day took many months to form. Indeed, at first he was not even aware that they were taking shape.

When Tatiana came, Alexander was taken to another cell, where they were allowed to talk undisturbed. He enjoyed these meetings. Tatiana was always very calm and quietly affectionate. She would sit there with the children and give him news of the outside world. Thus he learned about the terrible events in France: how the Jacobins had executed the King and his poor Queen Marie Antoinette. He heard how Catherine and her son Paul were on worse terms than ever, and that it seemed increasingly likely she would try to pass him over for her grandsons. He learned that Poland, finally, had been completely taken over by her neighbouring powers and that most of it was now, virtually, a Russian province. ‘One cannot deny,’ Tatiana remarked, ‘that Empress Catherine has been hugely successful.’

And whenever she came, he never failed, with a playful smile, to ask: ‘What news, then, from the big city?’

It was their special joke, and it referred not to St Petersburg, or even Moscow, nor even the provincial capital of Vladimir, but to Russka.

For the little town was now officially a city. True, it mustered little more than a thousand inhabitants; true, the road which led to it was only a dirt track, so deeply rutted that it was almost unusable – indeed, the river was still the best approach until the snows of winter came; but when Catherine had reformed the local administration fifteen years before, it had been decided that the little backwater should be raised, at least on paper, to the dignity of city. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of such cities in the Russian empire now – depressed little villages carrying this grandiose designation in preparation for the splendid new world that was to come. It was a contrast between official and actual reality which Alexander nowadays found rather amusing. ‘Have they mended the gate,’ he would ask, ‘in the big city?’

How he admired Tatiana. He came to do so more with every month that passed. His father had built a modest wooden house on the slope above Dirty Place – then never used it. But she had completely cleaned it up; she watched over the estates herself; the children seemed healthy. ‘But aren’t you terribly bored down here?’ he would ask. ‘Shouldn’t you go to Moscow or St Petersburg?’

‘Not at all,’ she always replied. ‘I find the country suits me very well.’ And gradually, as the months went by, the new realization began to dawn upon him. ‘I’ve sold the St Petersburg house,’ she informed him early in the first year. Then, two months later: ‘I hope you won’t mind, Alyosha, but I’ve dismissed the steward.’ A year later, after a good harvest, she told him: ‘I’m adding two little wings to the old house. I think you’ll like them.’ And to his astonishment, when he remarked that one day, when he was finally released, he’d try to pay off some of their debts, she smiled, kissed him and whispered: ‘We haven’t got any, my dearest.’

‘But how? Who gave us money?’

‘No one, Alyosha. The estates are quite profitable, you know. And,’ she smiled wryly, ‘our expenses in the country are modest, you see.’

He had said nothing, but after she had gone he sighed to himself and murmured: ‘The truth is, the best thing I ever did for the Bobrov family was to go to jail.’ It was an uncomfortable thought, and was soon followed by another: What use, then, will I be to my family even when I am released? The German girl had taken over.

Though he loved and admired his wife, he came often to ponder this, grimly, by day.

The dream that came to him by night was so absurd that it was laughable. It did not come very often; sometimes weeks, even a couple of months, might pass in between occurrences. But whenever the dream reappeared, it was always exactly the same.

It was the countess. She came to him just as she had that night years ago – a pale, insistent vision, staring at him, wagging her finger and hissing with an urgency that was as terrible as it was meaningless: ‘Voltaire. Voltaire.’

Why should this foolish dream upset him so? It was hard to say. Yet each time he had it, he awoke with a sense of emptiness and desolation that was hard to bear; he would awake with a cry that echoed round the monastery, and in the dim light from the dawn, he would find, even in the staring, angry eyes of the False Peter, a certain sense of comfort.

Once, after he had been in the cell for three years, the vision appeared as usual, but instead of speaking, the old countess just stared at him, with a quiet satisfaction; and then, obscenely, as if they were sharing some obscure joke about the world from beyond the grave, it seemed to Alexander that she winked. After that, the dream did not recur again.

It was a little before Christmas, in the year 1795, that Alexander heard a sled arrive in the courtyard of the monastery; its arrival was followed by a long pause then, to his surprise, he was taken out of his cell and brought to the one used for visits, and a few minutes later, a figure in a fur coat and hat was ushered in.

It was Adelaide de Ronville.

She had been visiting Vladimir. ‘And you know,’ she explained with a little shrug, ‘it’s not so far to Russka, in a sled.’

Alexander smiled. How moved he was that she should have made the journey. ‘How did you get in here? Did you bribe the monks?’ She nodded. ‘And where will you stay? You must go to our estate. You can’t get back to Vladimir tonight.’

‘Yes. They are expecting me there.’

He did not argue. ‘Let me look at you,’ he begged, and helped her off with her coat.

She stood before him. She was sixty. The lines on her face were more deeply scored, making an intricate network; yet when she turned her face up to his, it seemed to Alexander that, more than ever, the lines only accentuated and further defined what had been there. She made a slightly ironic little gesture with her mouth. ‘I grow old. These days, you know, there is nothing so wonderful to see.’

‘I do not agree.’

They talked for a little time. He asked after the countess, and learned that she was very frail, but otherwise unchanged. Had she forgiven him? ‘Of course not.’ He asked Adelaide about her own life. Had she a new lover?

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. It’s not important.’ They talked quietly, just as usual, until a monk came to indicate that Adelaide must leave. As Alexander held her coat for her again, he lightly touched her arm.

For many hours after Adelaide had gone, he found to his own surprise that he was trembling; and by this understood, more certainly even than in years gone by, that he would always be the prisoner of this, the nearest that he had come to passion in his life.

On the last day of the year 1796, some seven weeks after the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia died, Alexander Bobrov was released from prison, having completed only four years of his sentence. For one of the first acts of the new Tsar, Paul, was to give an amnesty to almost all the enemies of the mother he detested. Alexander went to his estate nearby.

It was just three months later that Countess Turova also died. ‘Truly,’ everyone said, ‘an era has really passed.’ She left the bulk of her huge estate to Alexander’s distant cousin. And a quarter of it to Adelaide de Ronville, who married soon after.