‘Should we?’ asked Natasha.
‘Of course you should,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, ‘whole bloody city’s built on the water. Just like here.’
Shortly before two o’clock the following day Rasputin was within sight of the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. He had walked all the way from St Petersburg, believing that this would give a better impression than coming by train. Holy men don’t need public transport. Up on the roof Alexandra had been watching the road for some time through her husband’s binoculars. Was this new holy man going to be the answer to her prayers? Was he the greater figure Philippe had spoken of? Every single report she had received about him had been favourable.
In the first class section of the St Petersburg to Berlin express Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were settling into their seats. Their train was due to leave at five past two. Johnny had asked Powerscourt for a period of silence at the beginning of their journey. Never, he said, in a decade or two of drinking, had he come across somebody with such a capacity for alcohol as Ricky Crabbe. The young man had drunk him, not merely under the table, but under the floorboards as well. Only once before, Johnny confessed, had he been blessed with such a hangover, and that was the morning after the publication of his first book when he had been taken in hand by a couple of alcoholic publishers.
Now Alexandra could just about make Rasputin out as he approached the sentry post that led into the palace grounds. She could see the tattered green coat, the dishevelled beard, even the long fingernails. Yes, he must be a holy man, she promised herself as she rushed down the stairs to greet him, how I hope he is the answer to all my prayers, how I hope he can heal Alexis.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Rasputin in his thick Siberian accent to the sergeant on duty. ‘I believe you are expecting me. My name is Father Grigory. I have come to save Russia.’
The Berlin express was pulling slowly out of the station. Powerscourt stared out of his window as the outer parts of St Petersburg slid past beyond the steam from the engine. He was going home to Lucy and the children. He was safe. He had not been killed in this, his first investigation since he had nearly died after the encounter in the Wallace Collection. Ricky Crabbe had sent a cable from him to Lucy, via William Burke, telling her he was safe and well and returning to London. He remembered that he had promised to take Lucy to Paris to celebrate his safe return. Maybe they could call on the elegant M. Olivier Brouzet of the French secret service and his Watteau in the Place des Vosges.
Haemos. Blood, the Greek word for blood. Philos, love of something, as in philosophy, love of wisdom, philology, love of words. Haemophilia, literally, love of blood. Powerscourt was thinking about blood and the Russians’ love of it. He thought of the blood on the snow in the streets of St Petersburg as the workers tried to reach the Winter Palace to hand in their petition to the Tsar, mown down by the Imperial security services, their faces chopped into bloody pieces by the cavalry, their children shot as if they were criminals. He thought of the end of that terrible day when he and Mikhail and Rupert de Chassiron had tried to help the wounded outside the Stroganov Palace. Often all they could do was to wipe away the blood and send the dying off to meet their Orthodox God with clean hands and clean faces. Cleanliness next to Godliness. He thought of the blood being spilt in that ludicrous war between Russia and Japan, the disfigured and the maimed and the blind and the deaf returning to beg on the streets of their capital. He thought of the blood flowing in the basement cells of the Okhrana, of the terrible whips lacerating men’s backs till their blood ran down in red puddles on to the floor, of Roderick Martin’s lifeblood dripping into the dust as he was lashed to death in Major Shatilov’s squalid office. He thought of Grand Duke Serge, cousin of the Tsar, married to the Empress Alexandra’s elder sister, his blood and guts blasted by the nitroglycerine explosion all over the walls of the Nicholas Gate in the Kremlin.
He thought of the little boy called Alexis, the Tsarevich, growing up in the Alexander Palace, the blood flowing uncontrollably round his body.
Haemophiliac Son. Haemophiliac Nation.