The Man From St. Petersburg

FOUR

A woman cried out, and time stood still.

Feliks knew the voice. The sound hit him like a mighty blow. The shock paralyzed him.

He was supposed to locate Orlov, point the gun at him, pull the trigger, make sure he was dead with another bullet, then turn and run into the bushes…

Instead he looked for the source of the cry, and saw her face. It was startlingly familiar, as if he had last seen it only yesterday, instead of nineteen years ago. Her eyes were wide with panic, and her small red mouth was open.

Lydia.

He stood at the door of the coach with his mouth open under the scarf, the gun pointing nowhere, and he thought: My Lydia-here in this carriage…

As he stared at her he was dimly aware that Walden was moving, with uncanny slowness, close by him on his left; but all Feliks could think was: This is how she used to look, wide-eyed and openmouthed, when she lay naked beneath me, her legs wrapped around my waist, and she stared at me and began to cry out with delight…

Then he saw that Walden had drawn a sword-

For God’s sake, a sword?

– and the blade was glinting in the lamplight as it swept down, and Feliks moved too slowly and too late, and the sword bit into his right hand, and he dropped the gun and it went off with a bang as it hit the road.

The explosion broke the spell.

Walden drew back the sword and thrust at Feliks’s heart. Feliks moved sideways. The point of the sword went through his coat and jacket and stuck into his shoulder. He jumped back reflexively and the sword came out. He felt a rush of warm blood inside his shirt.

He stared down at the road, looking for the gun, but he could not see it. He looked up again, but saw that Walden and Orlov had bumped into one another as they tried simultaneously to get out through the narrow carriage door. Feliks’s right arm hung limply at his side. He realized he was unarmed and helpless. He could not even strangle Orlov, for his right arm was useless. He had failed utterly, and all because of the voice of a woman from the past.

After all that, he thought bitterly; after all that.

Full of despair, he turned and ran away.

Walden roared: “Damned villain!”

Feliks’s wound hurt at every step. He heard someone running behind him. The footsteps were too light to be Walden’s: Orlov was chasing him. He teetered on the edge of hysteria as he thought: Orlov is chasing me-and I am running away!

He darted off the road and into the bushes. He heard Walden shout: “Aleks, come back. He’s got a gun!” They don’t know I dropped it, Feliks thought. If only I still had it I could shoot Orlov now.

He ran a little farther, then stopped, listening. He could hear nothing. Orlov had given up.

He leaned against a tree. He was exhausted by his short sprint. When he had caught his breath he took off his topcoat and the stolen livery coat and gingerly touched his wounds. They hurt like the devil, which he thought was probably a good sign, for if they had been very grave they would have been numb. His shoulder bled slowly, and throbbed. His hand had been sliced in the fleshy part between thumb and forefinger, and it bled fast.

He had to get out of the park before Walden had a chance to raise the hue and cry.

With difficulty he drew on the topcoat. He left the livery coat on the ground where it lay. He squeezed his right hand under his left armpit, to relieve the pain and slow the flow of blood. Wearily, he headed toward The Mall.

Lydia.

It was the second time in his life that she had caused a catastrophe. The first time, in 1895, in St. Petersburg -

No. He would not allow himself to think about her, not yet. He needed his wits about him now.

He saw with relief that his bicycle was where he had left it, under the overhanging branches of a big tree. He wheeled it across the grass to the edge of the park. Had Walden alerted the police yet? Were they looking for a tall man in a dark coat? He stared at the scene in The Mall. The footmen were still running, the car engines roaring, the carriages maneuvering. How long had it been since Feliks had climbed up onto the Walden coach-twenty minutes? In that time the world had turned over.

He took a deep breath and wheeled the bicycle into the road. Everyone was busy, nobody looked at him. Keeping his right hand in his coat pocket, he mounted the machine. He pushed off and began to pedal, steering with his left hand.

There were bobbies all around the palace. If Walden mobilized them quickly they could cordon off the park and the roads around it. Feliks looked ahead, toward Admiralty Arch. There was no sign of a roadblock.

Once past the arch he would be in the West End and they would have lost him.

He began to get the knack of cycling one-handed, and increased his speed.

As he approached the arch a motor car drew alongside him and, at the same time, a policeman stepped into the road ahead. Feliks stopped the bicycle and prepared to run-but the policeman was merely holding up the traffic to permit another car, belonging presumably to some kind of dignitary, to emerge from a gateway. When the car came out the policeman saluted, then waved the traffic on.

Feliks cycled through the arch and into Trafalgar Square.

Too slow, Walden, he thought with satisfaction.

It was midnight, but the West End was bright with streetlights and crowded with people and traffic. There were policemen everywhere and no other cyclists: Feliks was conspicuous. He considered abandoning the bicycle and walking back to Camden Town, but he was not sure he could make the journey on foot: he seemed to be tiring very easily.

From Trafalgar Square he rode up St. Martin ’s Lane, then left the main streets for the back alleys of Theatreland. A dark lane was suddenly illuminated as a stage door opened and a bunch of actors came out, talking loudly and laughing. Farther on he heard groans and sighs, and passed a couple making love standing up in a doorway.

He crossed into Bloomsbury. Here it was quieter and darker. He cycled north up Gower Street, past the classical facade of the deserted university. Pushing the pedals became an enormous effort, and he ached all over. Just a mile or two more, he thought.

He dismounted to cross the busy Euston Road. The lights of the traffic dazzled him. He seemed to be having difficulty focusing his eyes.

Outside Euston Station he got on the bicycle again and pedaled off. Suddenly he felt dizzy. A streetlight blinded him. The front wheel wobbled and hit the curb. Feliks fell.

He lay on the ground, dazed and weak. He opened his eyes and saw a policeman approaching. He struggled to his knees.

“Have you been drinkin’?” the policeman said.

“Feel faint,” Feliks managed.

The policeman took his right arm and hauled him to his feet. The pain in his wounded shoulder brought Feliks to his senses. He managed to keep his bleeding right hand in his pocket.

The policeman sniffed audibly and said: “Hmm.” His attitude became more genial when he discovered that Feliks did not smell of drink. “Will you be all right?”

“In a minute.”

“Foreigner, are you?”

The policeman had noticed his accent. “French,” Feliks said. “I work at the embassy.”

The policeman became more polite. “Would you like a cab?”

“No, thank you. I have only a little way to go.”

The policeman picked up the bicycle. “I should wheel it home if I were you.”

Feliks took the bicycle from him. “I will do that.”

“Very good, sir. Bong noo-wee.”

“Bonne nuit, Officer.” With an effort Feliks produced a smile. Pushing the bicycle with his left hand, he walked away. I’ll turn into the next alley and sit down for a rest, he resolved. He looked back over his shoulder: the policeman was still watching him. He made himself keep on walking, although he desperately needed to lie down. The next alley, he thought. But when he came to an alley he passed it, thinking: Not this one, but the next.

And in that way he got home.

It seemed hours later that he stood outside the high terraced house in Camden Town. He peered through a fog at the number on the door to make sure this was the right place.

To get to his room he had to go down a flight of stone steps to the basement area. He leaned the bicycle against the wrought-iron railings while he opened the little gate. He then made the mistake of trying to wheel the bicycle down the steps. It slid out of his grasp and fell into the area with a loud clatter. A moment later his landlady, Bridget, appeared at the street door in a shawl.

“What the divil is it?” she called.

Feliks sat on the steps and made no reply. He decided he would not move for a while, until he felt stronger.

Bridget came down and helped him to his feet. “You’ve had a few too many drinks,” she said. She made him walk down the steps to the basement door.

“Give us your key,” she said.

Feliks had to use his left hand to take the key from his right trouser pocket. He gave it to her and she opened the door. They went in. Feliks stood in the middle of the little room while she lit the lamp.

“Let’s have your coat off,” she said.

He let her remove his coat, and she saw the bloodstains. “Have you been fightin’?”

Feliks went and lay on the mattress.

Bridget said: “You look as if you lost!”

“I did,” said Feliks, and he passed out.

An agonizing pain brought him around. He opened his eyes to see Bridget bathing his wounds with something that stung like fire. “This hand should be stitched,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” Feliks breathed.

She made him drink from a cup. It was warm water with gin in it. She said: “I haven’t any brandy.”

He lay back and let her bandage him.

“I could fetch the doctor but I couldn’t be payin’ him.”

“Tomorrow.”

She stood up. “I’ll look at you first thing in the morning.”

“Thank you.”

She went out, and at last Feliks allowed himself to remember:

It has happened in the long run of ages that everything which permits men to increase their production, or even to continue it, has been appropriated by the few. The land belongs to the few, who may prevent the community from cultivating it. The coal-pits, which represent the labor of generations, belong again to the few. The lace-weaving machine, which represents, in its present state of perfection, the work of three generations of Lancashire weavers, belongs also to the few; and if the grandsons of the very same weaver who invented the first lace-weaving machine claim their right to bring one of these machines into motion, they will be told: “Hands off! This machine does not belong to you!” The railroads belong to a few shareholders, who may not even know where is situated the railway which brings them a yearly income larger than that of a medieval king. And if the children of those people who died by the thousands in digging the tunnels should gather and go-a ragged and starving crowd-to ask bread or work from the shareholders, they would be met with bayonets and bullets.

Feliks looked up from Kropotkin’s pamphlet. The bookshop was empty. The bookseller was an old revolutionist who made his money selling novels to wealthy women and kept a hoard of subversive literature in the back of the shop. Feliks spent a lot of time in here.

He was nineteen. He was about to be thrown out of the prestigious Spiritual Academy for truancy, indiscipline, long hair and associating with Nihilists. He was hungry and broke, and soon he would be homeless, and life was wonderful. He cared about nothing other than ideas, and he was learning every day new things about poetry, history, psychology and-most of all-politics.

Laws on property are not made to guarantee either to the individual or to society the enjoyment of the produce of their own labor. On the contrary, they are made to rob the producer of a part of what he has created. When, for example, the law establishes Mr. So-and-so’s right to a house, it is not establishing his right to a cottage he has built for himself, or to a house he has erected with the help of some of his friends. In that case no one would have disputed his right! On the contrary, the law is establishing his right to a house which is not the product of his labor.

The anarchist slogans had sounded ridiculous when he had first heard them: Property is theft, Government is tyranny, Anarchy is justice. It was astonishing how, when he had really thought about them, they came to seem not only true but crashingly obvious. Kropotkin’s point about laws was undeniable. No laws were required to prevent theft in Feliks’s home village: if one peasant stole another’s horse, or his chair, or the coat his wife had embroidered, then the whole village would see the culprit in possession of the goods and make him give them back. The only stealing that went on was when the landlord demanded rent; and the policeman was there to enforce that theft. It was the same with government. The peasants needed no one to tell them how the plow and the oxen were to be shared between their fields: they decided among themselves. It was only the plowing of the landlord’s fields that had to be enforced.

We are continually told of the benefits conferred by laws and penalties, but have the speakers ever attempted to balance the benefits attributed to laws and penalties against the degrading effects of these penalties upon humanity? Only calculate all the evil passions awakened in mankind by the atrocious punishments inflicted in our streets! Man is the cruelest animal on earth. And who has pampered and developed the cruel instincts if it is not the king, the judge and the priests, armed with law, who caused flesh to be torn off in strips, boiling pitch to be poured onto wounds, limbs to be dislocated, bones to be crushed, men to be sawn asunder to maintain their authority? Only estimate the torrent of depravity let loose in human society by the “informing” which is countenanced by judges, and paid in hard cash by governments, under pretext of assisting in the discovery of “crime.” Only go into the jails and study what man becomes when he is steeped in the vice and corruption which oozes from the very walls of our prisons. Finally, consider what corruption, what depravity of mind is kept up among men by the idea of obedience, the very essence of law; of chastisement; of authority having the right to punish; of the necessity for executioners, jailers, and informers-in a word, by all the attributes of law and authority. Consider this, and you will assuredly agree that a law inflicting penalties is an abomination which should cease to exist.

Peoples without political organization, and therefore less depraved than ourselves, have perfectly understood that the man who is called “criminal” is simply unfortunate; and that the remedy is not to flog him, to chain him up, or to kill him, but to help him by the most brotherly care, by treatment based on equality, by the usages of life among honest men.

Feliks was vaguely aware that a customer had come into the shop and was standing close to him, but he was concentrating on Kropotkin.

No more laws! No more judges! Liberty, equality and practical human sympathy are the only effective barriers we can oppose to the antisocial instincts of certain among us.

The customer dropped a book and he lost his train of thought. He glanced away from his pamphlet, saw the book lying on the floor beside the customer’s long skirt and automatically bent down to pick it up for her. As he handed it to her he saw her face.

He gasped. “Why, you’re an angel!” he said with perfect honesty.

She was blond and petite, and she wore a pale gray fur the color of her eyes, and everything about her was pale and light and fair. He thought he would never see a more beautiful woman, and he was right.

She stared back at him and blushed, but he did not turn away. It seemed, incredibly, that she found something fascinating in him, too.

After a moment he looked at her book. It was Anna Karenina. “Sentimental rubbish,” he said. He wished he had not spoken, for his words broke the spell. She took the book and turned away. He saw then that there was a maid with her, for she gave the book to the maid and left the shop. The maid paid for the book. Looking through the window, Feliks saw the woman get into a carriage.

He asked the bookseller who she was. Her name was Lydia, he learned, and she was the daughter of Count Shatov.

He found out where the Count lived, and the next day he hung around outside the house in the hope of seeing her. She went in and out twice, in her carriage, before a groom came out and chased Feliks off. He did not mind, for the last time her carriage passed she had looked directly at him.

The next day he went to the bookshop. For hours he read Bakunin’s Federalism, Socialism and Antitheologism without understanding a single word. Every time a carriage passed he looked out of the window. Whenever a customer came into the shop his heart missed a beat.

She came in at the end of the afternoon.

This time she left the maid outside. She murmured a greeting to the bookseller and came to the back of the shop, where Feliks stood. They stared at one another. Feliks thought: She loves me; why else would she come?

He meant to speak to her, but instead he threw his arms around her and kissed her. She kissed him back, hungrily, opening her mouth, hugging him, digging her fingers into his back.

It was always like that with them: when they met they threw themselves at one another like animals about to fight.

They met twice more in the bookshop and once, after dark, in the garden of the Shatov house. That time in the garden she was in her nightclothes. Feliks put his hands under the woolen nightgown and touched her body all over, as boldly as if she were a street girl, feeling and exploring and rubbing; and all she did was moan.

She gave him money so that he could rent a room of his own, and thereafter she came to see him almost every day for six astonishing weeks.

The last time was in the early evening. He was sitting at the table, wrapped in a blanket against the cold, reading Proudhon’s What Is Property? by candlelight. When he heard her footstep on the stairs he took his trousers off.

She rushed in, wearing an old brown cloak with a hood. She kissed him, sucked his lips, bit his chin and pinched his sides.

She turned and threw off the cloak. Underneath it she was wearing a white evening gown that must have cost hundreds of rubles. “Unfasten me, quickly,” she said.

Feliks began to undo the hooks at the back of the dress.

“I’m on my way to a reception at the British Embassy; I only have an hour,” she said breathlessly. “Hurry, please.”

In his haste he ripped one of the hooks out of the material. “Damn, I’ve torn it.”

“Never mind!”

She stepped out of the dress, then pulled off her petticoats, her chemise and her drawers, leaving on her corset, hose and shoes. She flung herself into his arms. As she was kissing him she pulled down his underpants.

She said: “Oh, God, I love the smell of your thing.”

When she talked dirty it drove him wild.

She pulled her breasts out of the top of her corset and said: “Bite them. Bite them hard. I want to feel them all evening.”

A moment later she pulled away from him. She lay on her back on the bed. Where the corset ended, moisture glistened in the sparse blond hair between her thighs.

She spread her legs and lifted them into the air, opening herself to him. He gazed at her for a moment, then fell on her.

She grabbed his penis with her hands and pushed it inside her greedily.

The heels of her shoes tore the skin of his back and he did not care.

“Look at me,” she said. “Look at me!”

He looked at her with adoration in his eyes.

An expression of panic came over her face.

She said: “Look at me, I’m coming!”

Then, still staring into his eyes, she opened her mouth and screamed.

“Do you think other people are like us?” she said.

“In what way?”

“Filthy.”

He lifted his head from her lap and grinned. “Only the lucky ones.”

She looked at his body, curled up between her legs. “You’re so compact and strong, you’re perfect,” she said. “Look how your belly is flat, and how neat your bottom is, and how lean and hard your thighs are.” She ran a finger along the line of his nose. “You have the face of a prince.”

“I’m a peasant.”

“Not when you’re naked.” She was in a reflective mood. “Before I met you, I was interested in men’s bodies, and all that; but I used to pretend I wasn’t, even to myself. Then you came along and I just couldn’t pretend anymore.”

He licked the inside of her thigh.

She shuddered. “Have you ever done this to another girl?”

“No.”

“Did you use to pretend, as well?”

“No.”

“I think I knew that, somehow. There’s a look about you, wild and free like an animal; you never obey anyone, you just do what you want.”

“I never before met a girl who would let me.”

“They all wanted to, really. Any girl would.”

“Why?” he said egotistically.

“Because your face is so cruel and your eyes are so kind.”

“Is that why you let me kiss you in the bookshop?”

“I didn’t let you-I had no choice.”

“You could have yelled for help, afterward.”

“By then all I wanted was for you to do it again.”

“I must have guessed what you were really like.”

It was her turn to be egotistical. “What am I really like?”

“Cold as ice on the surface, hot as hell below.”

She giggled. “I’m such an actor. Everyone in St. Petersburg thinks I’m so good. I’m held up as an example to younger girls, just like Anna Karenina. Now that I know how bad I really am, I have to pretend to be twice as virginal as before.”

“You can’t be twice as virginal as anything.”

“I wonder if they’re all pretending,” she resumed. “Take my father. If he knew I was here, like this, he’d die of rage. But he must have had the same feelings when he was young-don’t you think?”

“I think it’s an imponderable,” Feliks said. “But what would he do, really, if he found out?”

“Horsewhip you.”

“He’d have to catch me first.” Feliks was struck by a thought. “How old are you?”

“Almost eighteen.”

“My God, I could go to jail for seducing you.”

“I’d make Father get you out.”

He rolled over on to his front and looked at her. “What are we going to do, Lydia?”

“When?”

“In the long term.”

“We’re going to be lovers until I come of age, and then we’ll get married.”

He stared at her. “Do you mean that?”

“Of course.” She seemed genuinely surprised that he had not made the same assumption. “What else could we do?”

“You want to marry me?”

“Yes! Isn’t that what you want?”

“Oh, yes,” he breathed. “That’s what I want.”

She sat up, with her legs spread on either side of his face, and stroked his hair. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

Feliks said: “You never tell me how you manage to get away to come here.”

“It’s not very interesting,” she said. “I tell lies, I bribe servants and I take risks. Tonight, for example. The reception at the embassy starts at half past six. I left home at six o’clock and I’ll get there at a quarter past seven. The carriage is in the park-the coachman thinks I’m taking a walk with my maid. The maid is outside this house, dreaming about how she will spend the ten rubles I will give her for keeping her mouth shut.”

“It’s ten to seven,” Feliks said.

“Oh, God. Quick, do it to me with your tongue before I have to go.”

That night Feliks was asleep, dreaming about Lydia ’s father-whom he had never seen-when they burst into his room carrying lamps. He woke instantly and jumped out of bed. At first he thought students from the university were playing a prank on him. Then one of them punched his face and kicked him in the stomach, and he knew they were the secret police.

He assumed they were arresting him on account of Lydia, and he was terrified for her. Would she be publicly disgraced? Was her father crazy enough to make her give evidence in court against her lover?

He watched the police put all his books and a bundle of letters in a sack. The books were all borrowed, but none of the owners was foolish enough to put his name inside. The letters were from his father and his sister, Natasha-he had never had any letters from Lydia, and now he was thankful for that.

He was marched out of the building and thrown into a four-wheeled cab.

They drove across the Chain Bridge and then followed the canals, as if avoiding the main streets. Feliks asked: “Am I going to the Litovsky prison?” Nobody replied, but when they went over the Palace Bridge he realized he was being taken to the notorious Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, and his heart sank.

On the other side of the bridge the carriage turned left and entered a darkened arched passage. It stopped at a gate. Feliks was taken into a reception hall, where an army officer looked at him and wrote something in a book. He was put in the cab again and driven deeper into the fortress. They stopped at another gate and waited several minutes until it was opened from the inside by a soldier. From there Feliks had to walk through a series of narrow passages to a third iron gate which led to a large damp room.

The prison governor sat at a table. He said: “You are charged with being an anarchist. Do you admit it?”

Feliks was elated. So this was nothing to do with Lydia! “Admit it?” he said. “I boast of it.”

One of the policemen produced a book which was signed by the governor. Feliks was stripped naked, then given a green flannel dressing gown, a pair of woolen stockings and two yellow felt slippers much too big.

From there an armed soldier took him through more gloomy corridors to a cell. A heavy oak door closed behind him, and he heard a key turn in the lock.

The cell contained a bed, a table, a stool and a washstand. The window was an embrasure in an enormously thick wall. The floor was covered with painted felt, and the walls were cushioned with some kind of yellow upholstery.

Feliks sat on the bed.

This was where Peter I had tortured and killed his own son. This was where Princess Tarakanova had been kept in a cell which flooded so that the rats climbed all over her to save themselves from drowning. This was where Catherine II buried her enemies alive.

Dostoyevsky had been imprisoned here, Feliks thought proudly; so had Bakunin, who had been chained to a wall for two years. Nechayev had died here.

Feliks was at once elated to be in such heroic company and terrified at the thought that he might be here forever.

The key turned in the lock. A little bald man with spectacles came in, carrying a pen, a bottle of ink and some paper. He set them down on the table and said: “Write the names of all the subversives you know.”

Feliks sat down and wrote: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Peter Kropotkin, Jesus Christ-

The bald man snatched away the paper. He went to the door of the cell and knocked. Two hefty guards came in. They strapped Feliks to the table and took off his slippers and stockings. They began to lash the soles of his feet with canes.

The torture went on all night.

When they pulled out his fingernails, he began to give them made-up names and addresses, but they told him they knew they were false.

When they burned the skin of his testicles with a candle flame, he named all his student friends, but still they said he was lying.

Each time he passed out they revived him. Sometimes they would stop for a while and allow him to think it was all over at last; then they would begin again, and he would beg them to kill him so that the pain would stop. They carried on long after he had told them everything he knew.

It must have been around dawn that he passed out for the last time.

When he came round he was lying on the bed. There were bandages on his feet and hands. He was in agony. He wanted to kill himself, but he was too weak to move.

The bald man came into the cell in the evening. When he saw him, Feliks began to sob with terror. The man just smiled and went away.

He never came back.

A doctor came to see Feliks each day. Feliks tried without success to pump him for information: Did anyone outside know that Feliks was here? Had there been any messages? Had anyone tried to visit? The doctor just changed the dressings and went away.

Feliks speculated. Lydia would have gone to his room and found the place in disarray. Someone in the house would have told her the secret police had taken him away. What would she have done then? Would she make frantic inquiries, careless of her reputation? Would she have been discreet, and gone quietly to see the Minister of the Interior with some story about the boyfriend of her maid having been jailed in error?

Every day he hoped for word from her, but it never came.

Eight weeks later he could walk almost normally, and they released him without explanation.

He went to his lodging. He expected to find a message from her there, but there was nothing, and his room had been let to someone else. He wondered why Lydia had not continued to pay the rent.

He went to her house and knocked at the front door. A servant answered. Feliks said: “Feliks Davidovich Kschessinsky presents his compliments to Lydia Shatova-”

The servant slammed the door.

Finally he went to the bookshop. The old bookseller said: “Hello! I’ve got a message for you. It was brought yesterday by her maid.”

Feliks tore open the envelope with trembling fingers. It was written, not by Lydia, but by the maid. It read:

I have been Let Go and have no job it is all your fault She is wed and gone to England yesterday now you know the wages of Sin.

He looked up at the bookseller with tears of anguish in his eyes. “Is that all?” he cried.

He learned no more for nineteen years.

Normal regulations had been temporarily suspended in the Walden house, and Charlotte sat in the kitchen with the servants.

The kitchen was spotless, for of course the family had dined out. The fire had gone out in the great range, and the high windows were wide open, letting in the cool night air. The crockery used for servants’ meals was racked neatly in the dresser; the cook’s knives and spoons hung from a row of hooks; her innumerable bowls and pans were out of sight in the massive oak cupboards.

Charlotte had had no time to be frightened. At first, when the coach stopped so abruptly in the park, she had been merely puzzled; and after that her concern had been to stop Mama screaming. When they got home she had found herself a little shaky, but now, looking back, she found the whole thing rather exciting.

The servants felt the same way. It was very reassuring to sit around the massive bleached wooden table and talk things over with these people who were so much a part of her life: the cook, who had always been motherly; Pritchard, whom Charlotte respected because Papa respected him; the efficient and capable Mrs. Mitchell, who as housekeeper always had a solution to any problem.

William the coachman was the hero of the hour. He described several times the wild look in his assailant’s eyes as the man menaced him with the gun. Basking in the awestruck gaze of the under-house-parlormaid, he recovered rapidly from the indignity of having walked into the kitchen stark naked.

“Of course,” Pritchard explained, “I naturally presumed the thief just wanted William’s clothes. I knew Charles was at the palace, so he could drive the coach. I thought I wouldn’t inform the police until after speaking to his lordship.”

Charles the footman said: “Imagine how I felt when I found the carriage gone! I said to myself, I’m sure it was left here. Oh, well, I thinks, William’s moved it. I run up and down The Mall; I look everywhere. In the end I go back to the palace. ‘Here’s trouble,’ I says to the doorman, ‘the Earl of Walden’s carriage has gone missing.’ He says to me: ‘Walden?’ he says-not very respectful-”

Mrs. Mitchell interrupted: “Palace servants, they think they’re better than the nobility-”

“He says to me: ‘Walden’s gone, mate.’ I thought, Gorblimey, I’m for it! I come running through the park, and halfway home I find the carriage, and my lady having hysterics, and my lord with blood on his sword!”

Mrs. Mitchell said: “And after all that, nothing stolen.”

“A lewnatic,” said Charles. “An ingenious lewnatic.”

There was general agreement.

The cook poured the tea and served Charlotte first. “How is my lady now?” she said.

“Oh, she’s all right,” Charlotte said. “She went to bed and took a dose of laudanum. She must be asleep by now.”

“And the gentlemen?”

“Papa and Prince Orlov are in the drawing room, having a brandy.”

The cook sighed heavily. “Robbers in the park and suffragettes at the court-I don’t know what we’re coming to.”

“There’ll be a socialist revolution,” said Charles. “You mark my words.”

“We’ll all be murdered in our beds,” the cook said lugubriously.

Charlotte said: “What did the suffragette mean about the King torturing women?” As she spoke she looked at Pritchard, who was sometimes willing to explain to her things she was not supposed to know about.

“She was talking about force-feeding,” Pritchard said. “Apparently it’s painful.”

“Force-feeding?”

“When they won’t eat, they’re fed by force.”

Charlotte was mystified. “How on earth is that done?”

“Several ways,” said Pritchard with a look that indicated he would not go into detail about all of them. “A tube through the nostrils is one.”

The under-house-parlormaid said: “I wonder what they feed them.”

Charles said: “Probably ’ot soup.”

“I can’t believe this,” Charlotte said. “Why should they refuse to eat?”

“It’s a protest,” said Pritchard. “Makes difficulties for the prison authorities.”

“Prison?” Charlotte was astonished. “Why are they in prison?”

“For breaking windows, making bombs, disturbing the peace…”

“But what do they want?”

There was a silence as the servants realized that Charlotte had no idea what a suffragette was.

Finally Pritchard said: “They want votes for women.”

“Oh.” Charlotte thought: Did I know that women couldn’t vote? She was not sure. She had never thought about that sort of thing.

“I think this discussion has gone quite far enough,” said Mrs. Mitchell firmly. “You’ll be in trouble, Mr. Pritchard, for putting wrong ideas into my lady’s head.”

Charlotte knew that Pritchard never got in trouble, because he was practically Papa’s friend. She said: “I wonder why they care so much about something like voting.”

There was a ring, and they all looked instinctively at the bell board.

“Front door!” said Pritchard. “At this time of night!” He went out, pulling on his coat.

Charlotte drank her tea. She felt tired. The suffragettes were puzzling and rather frightening, she decided; but all the same she wanted to know more.

Pritchard came back. “Plate of sandwiches, please, Cook,” he said. “Charles, take a fresh soda siphon to the drawing room.” He began to arrange plates and napkins on a tray.

“Well, come on,” Charlotte said. “Who is it?”

“A gentleman from Scotland Yard,” said Pritchard.

Basil Thomson was a bullet-headed man with light-colored receding hair, a heavy mustache and a penetrating gaze. Walden had heard of him. His father had been Archbishop of York. Thomson had been educated at Eton and Oxford and had done service in the Colonies as a Native Commissioner and as Prime Minister of Tonga. He had come home to qualify as a barrister and then had worked in the Prison Service, ending up as Governor of Dartmoor Prison with a reputation as a riot breaker. From prisons he had gravitated toward police work, and had become an expert on the mixed criminal-anarchist milieu of London’s East End. This expertise had got him the top job in the Special Branch, the political police force.

Walden sat him down and began to recount the evening’s events. As he spoke he kept an eye on Aleks. The boy was superficially calm, but his face was pale, he sipped steadily at a glass of brandy-and-soda and his left hand clutched rhythmically at the arm of his chair.

At one point Thomson interrupted Walden, saying: “Did you notice when the carriage picked you up that the footman was missing?”

“Yes, I did,” Walden said. “I asked the coachman where he was, but the coachman seemed not to hear. Then, because there was such a crush at the palace door, and my daughter was telling me to hurry up, I decided not to press the matter until we got home.”

“Our villain was relying on that, of course. He must have a cool nerve. Go on.”

“The carriage stopped suddenly in the park, and the door was thrown open by the man.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall. He had a scarf or something over his face. Dark hair. Staring eyes.”

“All criminals have staring eyes,” Thomson said. “Earlier on, had the coachman got a better look at him?”

“Not much. At that time the man wore a hat, and of course it was dark.”

“Hm. And then?”

Walden took a deep breath. At the time he had been not so much frightened as angry, but now, when he looked back on it, he was full of fear for what might have happened to Aleks, or Lydia, or Charlotte. He said: “Lady Walden screamed, and that seemed to disconcert the fellow. Perhaps he had not expected to find any women in the coach. Anyway, he hesitated.” And thank God he did, he thought. “I poked him with my sword, and he dropped the gun.”

“Did you do him much damage?”

“I doubt it. I couldn’t get a swing in that confined space, and of course the sword isn’t particularly sharp. I bloodied him, though. I wish I had chopped off his damned head.”

The butler came in, and conversation stopped. Walden realized he had been talking rather loudly. He tried to calm himself. Pritchard served sandwiches and brandy-and-soda to the three men. Walden said: “You’d better stay up, Pritchard, but you can send everyone else to bed.”

“Very good, my lord.”

When he had gone Walden said: “It is possible that this was just a robbery. I have let the servants think that, and Lady Walden and Charlotte, too. However, a robber would hardly have needed such an elaborate plan, to my mind. I am perfectly certain that it was an attempt on Aleks’s life.”

Thomson looked at Aleks. “I’m afraid I agree. Have you any idea how he knew where to find you?”

Aleks crossed his legs. “My movements haven’t been secret.”

“That must change. Tell me, sir, has your life ever been threatened?”

“I live with threats,” Aleks said tightly. “There has never been an attempt before.”

“Is there any reason why you in particular should be the target of Nihilists or revolutionists?”

“For them, it is enough that I am a p-prince.”

Walden realized that the problems of the English establishment, with suffragettes and Liberals and trade unions, were trivial by comparison with what the Russians had to cope with, and he felt a surge of sympathy for Aleks.

Aleks went on in a quiet, controlled voice. “However, I am known to be something of a reformer, by Russian standards. They could pick a more appropriate victim.”

“Even in London,” Thomson agreed. “There’s always a Russian aristocrat or two in London for the season.”

Walden said: “What are you getting at?”

Thomson said: “I’m wondering whether the villain knew what Prince Orlov is doing here, and whether his motive for tonight’s attack was to sabotage your talks.”

Walden was dubious. “How would the revolutionists have found that out?”

“I’m just speculating,” Thomson replied. “Would this be an effective way to sabotage your talks?”

“Very effective indeed,” Walden said. The thought made him go cold. “If the Czar were to be told that his nephew had been assassinated in London by a revolutionist-especially if it were an expatriate Russian revolutionist-he would go through the roof. You know, Thomson, how the Russians feel about our having their subversives here-our open-door policy has caused friction at the diplomatic level for years. Something like this could destroy Anglo-Russian relations for twenty years. There would be no question of an alliance then.”

Thomson nodded. “I was afraid of that. Well, there’s no more we can do tonight. I’ll set my department to work at dawn. We’ll search the park for clues, and interview your servants, and I expect we’ll round up a few anarchists in the East End.”

Aleks said: “Do you think you will catch the man?”

Walden longed for Thomson to give a reassuring answer, but it was not forthcoming. “It won’t be easy,” Thomson said. “He’s obviously a planner, so he’ll have a bolt-hole somewhere. We’ve no proper description of him. Unless his wounds take him to hospital, our chances are slim.”

“He may try to kill me again,” Aleks said.

“So we must take evasive action. I propose you should move out of this house tomorrow. We’ll take the top floor of one of the hotels for you, in a false name, and give you a bodyguard. Lord Walden will have to meet with you secretly, and you’ll have to cut out social engagements, of course.”

“Of course.”

Thomson stood up. “It’s very late. I’ll set all this in motion.”

Walden rang for Pritchard. “You’ve got a carriage waiting, Thomson?”

“Yes. Let us speak on the telephone tomorrow morning.”

Pritchard saw Thomson out, and Aleks went off to bed. Walden told Pritchard to lock up, then went upstairs.

He was not sleepy. As he undressed he let himself relax and feel all the conflicting emotions that he had so far held at bay. He felt proud of himself, at first-after all, he thought, I drew a sword and fought off an assailant: not bad for a man of fifty with a gouty leg! Then he became depressed when he recalled how coolly they had all discussed the diplomatic consequences of the death of Aleks-bright, cheerful, shy, handsome, clever Aleks, whom Walden had seen grow into a man.

He got into bed and lay awake, reliving the moment when the carriage door flew open and the man stood there with the gun; and now he was frightened, not for himself or Aleks, but for Lydia and Charlotte. The thought that they might have been killed made him tremble in his bed. He remembered holding Charlotte in his arms, eighteen years ago, when she had blond hair and no teeth; he remembered her learning to walk and forever falling on her bottom; he remembered giving her a pony of her own, and thinking that her joy when she saw it gave him the biggest thrill of his life; he remembered her just a few hours ago, walking into the royal presence with her head held high, a grown woman and a beautiful one. If she died, he thought, I don’t know that I could bear it.

And Lydia: if Lydia were dead I would be alone. The thought made him get up and go through to her room. There was a night-light beside her bed. She was in a deep sleep, lying on her back, her mouth a little open, her hair a blond skein across the pillow. She looked soft and vulnerable. I have never been able to make you understand how much I love you, he thought. Suddenly he needed to touch her, to feel that she was warm and alive. He got into bed with her and kissed her. Her lips responded but she did not wake up. Lydia, he thought, I could not live without you.

Lydia had lain awake for a long time, thinking about the man with the gun. It had been a brutal shock, and she had screamed in sheer terror-but there was more to it than that. There had been something about the man, something about his stance, or his shape, or his clothes, that had seemed dreadfully sinister in an almost supernatural way, as if he were a ghost. She wished she could have seen his eyes.

After a while she had taken another dose of laudanum, and then she slept. She dreamed that the man with the gun came to her room and got into bed with her. It was her own bed, but in the dream she was eighteen years old again. The man put his gun down on the white pillow beside her head. He still had the scarf around his face. She realized that she loved him. She kissed his lips through the scarf.

He made love to her beautifully. She began to think that she might be dreaming. She wanted to see his face. She said Who are you? and a voice said Stephen. She knew this was not so, but the gun on the pillow had somehow turned into Stephen’s sword, with blood on its point; and she began to have doubts. She clung to the man on top of her, afraid that the dream would end before she was satisfied. Then, dimly, she began to suspect that she was doing in reality what she was doing in the dream; yet the dream persisted. Strong physical pleasure possessed her. She began to lose control. Just as her climax began the man in the dream took the scarf from his face, and in that moment Lydia opened her eyes, and saw Stephen’s face above her; and then she was overcome by ecstasy, and for the first time in nineteen years she cried for joy.