It was thanks to a common interest that Pushkin had taken notice of Sergei – a love of Russian folk tales. His nanny Arina, the serf woman, had taught Sergei most of what he knew: the tale of the fabulous firebird, the hero Ilya of Murom – ‘You should see my fat brother Ilya for a real comparison with the legendary hero!’ he would laugh – and countless others. Even Pushkin was impressed with his knowledge. ‘Always keep those folk tales in your mind, my young versifier,’ he would say. ‘They contain the true spirit, the special genius of Russia.’
It was Pushkin, however, who had led Sergei into serious trouble. It had begun with a cartoon – scandalous but light-hearted – which Pushkin had drawn after the final defeat of Napoleon. It showed the angelic Tsar Alexander returning in triumph – but having grown so fat in the west that the triumphal arches were hastily being widened for him! It was some months later that Sergei followed his hero. His target, however, was the new and intensely pious Minister of Education – one of the noble Golitsyn family. And his cartoon showed the Minister making a detailed personal inspection of the girls at the Smolny School, to ascertain their morals! It was outrageous, and though few of the teaching staff at the school had any love for the authoritarian minister, he was solemnly warned: ‘Any more trouble from you, Bobrov, and you’ll be expelled.’
Whatever the risk of trouble, however, Sergei knew what he must do. It’ll be all right, he told himself. And anyway, I won’t let Olga down.
The early morning was still dark when Sergei slipped out. A groom was waiting for him with a horse half a mile from the school and soon he was clattering down the road to St Petersburg. The road was empty. Sometimes he passed between long, dark lines of trees that seemed about to come together and smother him. Then the land would open out into a wasteland of desolate brown traversed by grey gashes of unmelted snow. More than once, he half-expected to hear the cry of a wolf. The icy wet air stung his face.
And yet he was happy. A day before, he had sent a message to Olga, telling her where to meet him, and in his mind’s eye he could see her pale face and hear her voice saying: ‘I knew you would come.’ It made him feel warm inside. How lucky he was to have such a beautiful sister. How happy he was to be a Bobrov.
And how fortunate to be alive – and a Russian – at such a time! Never had the world looked so exciting. The great threat of Napoleon had finally been laid to rest in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. Now the British had put the aggressor of Europe on the distant Atlantic island of St Helena, from which there would be no escape. Russia, meanwhile, was now stronger than ever before in her history. Down in the south-east, in the Caucasus Mountains, the ancient Kingdom of Georgia had at last been joined to Russia’s empire. In the north, Finland, long under Swedish control, had also been taken over by the Tsar. In the distant east, across the sea, Russia not only possessed Alaska but had now established a fort in California too. And, most splendid prize of all, at the great Congress of Vienna where, after Napoleon, the assembled powers had redrawn the map of Europe, Russia had been given almost the whole of her ancient rival Poland, with her lovely capital of Warsaw.
But what really excited young Sergei was Russia’s new place in the world. No longer the barbarous Asiatic kingdom cut off from the western world; no longer the backward pupil of Dutch and German adventurers, English and French. At the congress, it was the Russian Tsar who took the lead. More even than this, Russia had proclaimed her own, special mission.
‘Let us put a final end to these terrible wars and bloody revolutions,’ the Tsar had proclaimed to the governments of Europe. ‘Let the European powers come together in a new and universal brotherhood, founded solely on Christian charity.’
This was the famous Holy Alliance. It was, by any standards, an astonishing document. Russia even proposed a shared, European army – the first international peace-keeping force – to police this universal order.
Admittedly such grand ideas had existed before, in the days of the Roman Empire or the medieval Church; but the Holy Alliance with its mystical language was profoundly Russian. And if the devious diplomats of the west signed it with a cynical smile, and the pragmatic British refused even to do that, every Russian knew that the west was corrupt. Simple, straightforward, warm-hearted, fervent: the Holy Alliance was the Russians at their best. No wonder that young Sergei Bobrov the schoolboy felt exalted.
The city of St Petersburg was already in sight, under a platinum sky, when Sergei reached the post-house where he changed horses; and the harsh, bright morning was well advanced by the time he entered the capital.
The Smolny Convent School lay some three miles east of the Winter Palace, at the far end of the Neva basin where the river curved round to the south. Since he had time, Sergei took a leisurely route along the embankment beside the pink granite of the quays, past the great statue of the Bronze Horseman, the old Admiralty and the Palace. The Admiralty – though it still contained shipyards – was being refashioned to a severe neo-classical design, surmounted by a high, golden flèche to echo the slim golden spire of the St Peter and St Paul Cathedral across the water. Sergei breathed a sigh of contentment. How wonderful it was to be in St Petersburg.
There was another reason, too, for his excitement.
For in the northern capital of St Petersburg, in the month of April, it was the season of the break-up of the ice. Though much of the snow and slush had been cleared from the grey streets, there remained, through the centre of the city, the great white lagoon of the frozen Neva, and at this time it began to melt. The roads across it had been dismantled. Soon, before the ice floes began to move, they would take up the pontoon bridges too. And today, as he rode along the embankment, he could see great fissures across the Neva’s surface and, from time to time, hear a great crack, loud as a pistol shot, as another section broke up. How thrilling it was, on this chilly, damp morning, to feel the wet air on one’s face and know that here, too, the huge northern world, in its own indomitable fashion, was making life anew. As Sergei rode along, his young heart was dancing.
And it was dancing with excitement still as he came to the long, closed wall of the Smolny Convent.
He had told Olga in his message exactly where to go and when. Pushkin himself had told him about the little window in the wall where one could enter unobserved. Sure enough, it was there, about twelve feet up. Having left his horse at an inn, therefore, Sergei discreetly made his way to this spot and waited. He waited an hour. Then at last the window opened.
There were two hours before she would be missed. They sat side by side in the little whitewashed room, his arm around her shoulder and her head, from time to time, resting upon his chest as they talked softly together.
He loved her. Of the other Bobrovs, she resembled Alexis the most. Her build was slender though there was nothing weak about her long limbs and elegant, tapering hands. She had her brother’s slightly Turkish features with a long, chiselled nose, and a mouth that turned down with faint irony at the corners; but whereas there was a trace of cruelty in Alexis’s face, in hers there was only refinement. Her eyes were deep blue and sometimes seemed a little startled at the world, although they could suddenly become transformed into a glowing gaiety. And how gratefully, now, they looked up at him.