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:
I cannot forbear to mention, dear brother, certain news that has reached me. It is widely known in St Petersburg, I am told, that despite your recent marriage, you neglect your wife and continue your affair with a certain lady.
I must inform you that your membership of our order places burdens upon you; and this conduct is not acceptable. Look into your heart, I beg you, and decide what you must do.
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.