‘You make them sound like deprived children. It can’t be as bad as that, surely?’
‘Well, I think it is. There’s no doubt their parents love them all dearly, but they can’t see they’re stifling the life out of them. And there’s another thing, Mikhail.’ The girl lowered her voice and looked about the library very carefully, as if an Okhrana agent might be hiding behind the Voltaire or the Rousseau. ‘That little boy. There’s something not quite right with him. I don’t know what it is, I don’t think they know what it is, but I’m sure it’s serious, very serious.’
‘What do you mean, something not quite right with him? Is he not crawling yet or whatever babies are expected to do?’
‘It’s not that, Mikhail. Two or three times now it’s happened. He falls ill, don’t ask me how. Madam Alix puts on an even longer face than usual, Tsar looks like all the bank loans are going to go wrong at once, doctors arrive from Petersburg by the trainload. Literally. Once we had seven medical professors in the Alexander Palace in one day. Fairly soon I’m going to get to the bottom of it all.’
‘So is that what breaks up the boredom? Earnest society doctors coming to inspect the Tsarevich? What do his sisters say about it all? Do they know what’s going on?’
‘I think they have been sworn to silence, or a cutting off of the biscuit ration at tea-time. They don’t say a word. There is one other thing that’s happened recently though I don’t know if it means anything at all. Two of the eggs have disappeared, two of the most beautiful ones.’
‘Eggs? Disappeared? What eggs? Whose eggs? Royal eggs? Special Romanov eggs from special Romanov hens?’ The royal household at Tsarskoe Selo was beginning to sound to the novice Mikhail like a cross between a penal institution and a dairy farm. Even he, never a fully convinced monarchist, wasn’t sure he would approve of such prosaic developments.
‘Sorry, Mikhail. I should have explained it better,’ said Natasha with a laugh. ‘The person who makes the eggs is Mr Faberge, the jeweller. Every Easter he is commissioned by the Tsar to make two new eggs, one for his mother and one for his wife. One of these eggs is called the Trans-Siberian Railway egg and it was made in 1900 to commemorate the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The outside of the egg is made of green translucent emerald gold and has all the stations of the railway marked on it in silver. When you open it up there’s a tiny little train about a foot long which actually goes when you wind it up with its clockwork key. It’s got a dining car, smoking and non-smoking cars. I think it’s even got a chapel carriage at the back.’
‘Have you seen it go, this train, Natasha?’
‘No, I haven’t, but the girls have. They said it was sensational. The other one is not so dramatic but pretty special all the same. It was called the Danish Royal Palaces egg and when you opened this little chap up you got eight portraits of eight different Danish castles that the Tsar’s mother or some royal Danish person must have lived in when she was growing up. I did see that one opened up and it was just beautiful.’
‘So where have they gone?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, glancing anxiously at the clock above the door. ‘One week ago they were all locked up in their own glass cabinet along with the other eggs and the next minute they’d gone. Nobody seems very bothered about it. Perhaps they haven’t noticed. I must go now, Mikhail, or I will get into trouble and be locked up with all the other assassins when I get back. Will you see me to the station?’
‘Of course I will,’ said Mikhail. ‘Any chance next time of meeting at Tsarskoe Selo? Any chance I could bring my new friend Lord Powerscourt?’
Lord Francis Powerscourt was not overjoyed at his reception back at the British Embassy. For de Chassiron, he felt sure, he brought a sense of excitement and even danger that served to add spice to a life that might easily have degenerated into foppish boredom. De Chassiron would always be glad of somebody new to talk to, some fresh recipient for his sarcasm and his cleverness. De Chassiron was not the problem. The Ambassador was. De Chassiron had given Powerscourt a fairly brutal run-down over breakfast that morning. ‘Done a turn in Washington, His Nibs has, not top man but number two. Only embassy he’s ever served in where he could speak the language as well as the natives, and even that was doubtful. Been Ambassador in Paris, weak on diplomatic and business French. Been Ambassador in Germany where he offended the Kaiser and half the government by forgetting to salute in the right place at some ludicrous parade invented by the equally ludicrous Kaiser. Now he’s here in St Petersburg, aiming to stay for a couple of years at most. Then he can return to London to take over from the etiolated Sir Jeremiah Reddaway as Permanent Secretary to the Foreign Office. He’s already Sir Jasper Colville. Then he can fulfil his wife’s greatest ambition and become Lord Colville of somewhere or other. Tooting Bec maybe,’ de Chassiron said savagely, his contempt for his superior blatant, ‘or Clapham Common. But you, Powerscourt,’ here de Chassiron leaned back in his chair and ran an arm through his hair, only to find yet again that the incipient bald patch was marching inexorably on, ‘you might be trouble. Dead British diplomats, nothing he would like less. Troublesome inquiries with the native authorities, even less welcome. There’s nothing His Nibs would like more than to leave Martin under the ice of the Neva river, if that’s where he is, and for the body not to be found until he has returned home to take up his new position and his seat in the House of Lords. Once you come to him with something concrete, he won’t like it one little bit. Anything that might upset His Majesty’s relations with the Tsar of All the Russias not welcome in this Embassy. You could do him real damage if you find out anything really serious about what happened to Martin. We could almost say you’ve got his future in your hands.’
Now the three men were sitting in the Ambassador’s study, drinking English tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. The Ambassador had seen too many of his colleagues fall into the wretched customs of their hosts and forget who and what they were. The Ambassador was seated behind a large desk that would not have looked out of place in a Pall Mall club. Powerscourt suddenly realized that all the furniture, the sofas, the chairs, the occasional tables, the racks for newspapers, could have been transferred direct from the Athenaeum or the Reform Club in London’s Pall Mall. Maybe the British Embassy, like the Russian Tsarina, did its shopping at Maples in the Tottenham Court Road.
Before Powerscourt presented his report on the day’s discoveries, the Ambassador graced his little audience with his own view on the diplomatic problems surrounding the strange case of Roderick Martin. The need to be aware of Russian susceptibilities, of their difficulties both with the Japanese War on the one hand, and with the bomb-bearing revolutionaries on the other. The need, of course, for His Majesty’s representatives to be aware of the dignity of their own position while not compromising the Russians’ room for manoeuvre. The need to be aware, too, of the pressures for information and hard facts from home. Public opinion, although still sleeping on this issue, as everybody had taken great care to keep it out of the newspapers, could easily be roused and might not prove an easy bedfellow. Prejudice against the Russian bear, so prominent a generation ago, in Sir Jasper’s view, could easily come lumbering out of the same forest once again. The need for boldness tempered with caution, for restraint married with respect for the Russian perspective.