He didn’t know what he’d do, but he was sure he didn’t want the girl to see him not doing it!
Ah, here was the place. He gazed down into the trench, scanned the faces he saw. But he could not say any of them resembled Pavlo.
He called the foreman over and did his best to describe the Cossack. The foreman nodded.
‘Yes, sir, indeed, we had such a fellow. I had to thrash him yesterday, as a matter of fact.’
‘Why?’
‘I saw him talking to strangers. A girl.’
‘Ah, yes. He’s not here today?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Tomorrow, perhaps?’
‘Don’t think so, sir.’
Procopy looked at him carefully.
‘He must’ve been weaker’n I thought,’ the foreman mumbled.
‘You mean he’s dead?’
‘’Fraid so, sir. Is that all right?’
Oh, yes. It was all right.
Indeed, it would hardly be noticed. For though history is uncertain how many workers died of disease, fatigue and starvation in the building of St Petersburg, it was certainly tens, some say hundreds, of thousands.
Another morning, rather warmer, two days later.
There was a light breeze stirring the waters of the Neva, like those of the sea beyond, into short, choppy waves.
Maryushka was leaving at last. In a way, the news about Pavlo seemed to sever her last link with the past. She knew she must only look forward now. But to what exactly? For herself, to happiness with her husband, she hoped. Yet what did that happiness mean, in this huge land of Russia?
The clouds were high in the sky. The whole day was filled with a strange, bright greyness. Further east, beyond the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul, and high above the waters, three seagulls were soaring and swerving in the sky. As they turned, one after another, their bodies seemed to glow with an unearthly luminous light.
She allowed her gaze to run along the Neva. At that moment, for some reason, she suddenly felt her father’s presence with her. Old Daniel. At the thought of him she smiled.
But then her smile disappeared. For as the wind caught her face, and as she stared at the huge, harsh geometry of that mighty place, it was as if another presence was emerging from that city to face her father – something frightening, grim as a Mongol Khan from ancient times.
And then she saw it.
It was a vast sun, hurtful to the eye – yet cold as ice. It was rising, implacably, from the northern sea into the endless Russian sky. It would, she sensed, dry the very blood from her body with its terrible rays.
And by this vision she, too, understood that, as her father had told her, the awful days of the Apocalypse had come.
And the name of the Antichrist was Peter.
In 1718, after conspiring against his father, the Tsarevich Alexis was foolish enough to be lured from exile back to Russia by promises of forgiveness from his father.
He was persuaded to do so by an elderly and cunning diplomat: Peter Tolstoy.
Soon afterwards the Tsarevich Alexis, after torture, died in the St Peter and St Paul Fortress.
It did not matter. There were other heirs.
In 1721, by the Treaty of Nystadt, the Baltic lands, including those known as Latvia and Estonia, were formally recognized as belonging to Russia. They would remain in her hands for two centuries, until 1918.
For this the newly created Russian Senate gave Tsar Peter the grandiose tides of Pater patriae, Imperator, Maximus: Father of his country, Emperor, The Great.
In 1722, after the unexpected death of Procopy Bobrov, his son decided to revive a village of his, called Dirty Place, near the little town of Russka. So he transferred half the population of another of his villages to the place.
Amongst the villagers was a woman with three fine children. Her name was Maryushka.
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 alclass="underline" 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.