‘You had just fallen asleep.’
I rise, scrambling a little, reaching for the bedside shelf I have made of the coffee table. The notebook is underneath several of the maps I’ve just gone through. I brush off the leather binding and blow across the cover. As I turn it upside down, experimentally, a page comes loose. Lev is right. It’s an old map, with marked creases and serious browning, torn in a way that suggests it once belonged to an atlas.
Something feels tight in my chest, and I fold the map back up. ‘It’s weird. Alexey is looking for a place called Popovka but I can’t find it on any of these other maps, and then this just happens to show the way?’
‘Coincidence,’ says Lev.
‘I don’t believe in coincidences. What, you don’t think it’s unlikely?’
He sits back, rubbing his neck. ‘I think your work for the day is done.’
CHAPTER SIX
Antonina
Petrograd (St Petersburg), February 1917
In the entry hall of the house on the Fontanka, beneath the twinkly, tiered chandelier, Tonya stops to stare at the cabinet that contains Dmitry’s collection of Gzhel ceramics and Lomonosov porcelains. She presses a hand against her flat belly. Mama’s warnings seem to float around her eyes, like black spots.
She has not bled since Christmas.
She knows what that means. She remembers the first time she ever bled, only months before she met Dmitry, the way Mama leapt upon the mess. The look on Mama’s face was all bled out too. You can have children now, said Mama. Mama who lost so many babies over the years, or not quite babies. Stops and starts. Tightly bound bundles that had to be whisked away at midnight while the malevolent midwives whispered to themselves: Lucky that it did not survive, sad mite …
Tonya was the one who survived.
The weather is warm for February. It feels like a fever. The whole city has somehow, without explanation, without impetus, poured out of the houses and offices and cafes and restaurants and schools and museums, and onto the streets. Men, women, children, workers, shopkeepers, bankers, taxi drivers. There are police, and there must be secret police too, but they can do nothing. There have been plenty of political demonstrations this year, but something is different today. Something that sings.
She fights her way up the embankment to the Liteyny Bridge, only to see that protestors are swarming the length of the river. Streaming in from the Vyborg side, they spill onto the ice of the Neva, which cracks and creaks beneath their weight.
People of Russia, the skin of our city is on fire, and soon the body will know …
‘Soldiers!’ comes the shout.
Tonya turns and nearly trips. A mounted brigade of the Tsar’s Cossacks is forming a half-moon by the bridge. A chunk of ice sails through the air with a shrill whistle. It lands a yard from her feet. Someone pushes her from behind and she falls forward, skids on her knees, crawls to standing. Ice and stones and sticks fly overhead. The Cossacks’ horses are spitting froth, their ears pitched forward, their noses running.
A red ribbon lands on her shoulder, hooks into her hair. She tugs at it, and there is a sharp jag of pain as it comes away. Damp hands slide off her, rough clothing scrapes against her as she forces her way across the bridge, against the tide. On the Vyborg side she stumbles along the embankment, onwards until the protests fade to a distant murmur, but even here, on these tranquil side streets, she can tell that Petrograd is bursting at the seams. Hungry and heaving. Pulsating. Pulsing. Alive.
She swallows to stem her growing nausea.
Valentin’s courtyard looks empty, but then she sees him emerging, stopping at the top of the cellar stairs. He calls out to her, but his voice is hoarse. His lips are pale. He looks as if he hasn’t slept for days.
‘Do you see what’s happening?’ he says, in a single breath. ‘You must join the cause. Join us.’
Join him.
‘You should sleep,’ she says, going closer. ‘You’ll make yourself ill.’
‘I can’t rest. The people need me. And they would need you too.’
She laughs. ‘You wouldn’t want someone like me in the underground. I’d give in straightaway to the Okhrana.’
‘You might last longer than you think,’ he counters. ‘Everyone has strength that they don’t know exists, Tonya, until the moment comes. The right time and place.’
‘Have you given this speech before?’ she asks, trying to tease.
‘Not this.’ He reaches for her, kisses her on the forehead. Speaks against her skin. ‘This is the very first time.’
It is teatime, even in the midst of citywide chaos, and the Countess Burzinova has come again to call.
Tonya entertains Natalya and Natalya’s daughter, Akulina, in the Blue Salon. Akulina is eleven years old, skinny, mopey, often scratching at a fingernail, hiding behind her shock of red hair. It is only that hair that suggests she is related to Natalya at all.
Dmitry is out of the house. Tonya sits perched on the edge of her chair, doing her best to pay attention to the Countess. There is a layer of gunpowder hanging over the city so thick that she can taste it in her mouth, even in here. She nibbles at a slice of linseed cake, the only pastry they have left. She can’t banish the taste. Where is Valentin now? What does he think, how does he feel, as people throw themselves against the sides of buildings, scurry across the intersections? Is he safe? Is he alive? Is he—
‘Are you listening?’ The Countess Burzinova is looking at her with one eyebrow raised, like a fish hook.
Tonya lowers her plate.
‘I was saying what a scene it is out there,’ remarks Natalya. ‘Soldiers at all the intersections and machine guns in all the squares. Weren’t you frightened, Lina?’
Her daughter gives something of a nod.
‘What about you?’ Natalya throws at Tonya. ‘Have you been deterred from taking your morning walks?’
Tonya has to proceed cautiously here, as she would on the weary spring ice of the Fontanka. Natalya is too much a stranger to be trusted, and too close an acquaintance to be rebuffed. ‘At times,’ she says. ‘But I never feel in danger.’
‘Please, darling.’
Tonya licks her lips, does not respond. Akulina has bowed her head, as if in prayer. They are both children in the presence of the Countess.
Natalya dusts the crumbs off her fingers. ‘You’ve been seen with Valentin Andreyev.’
‘Valentin is a friend of mine.’ Tonya keeps her voice bland. ‘I admire him.’
‘Admire,’ says Natalya. ‘What a word for it.’
Natalya knows.
A denial of wrongdoing springs to Tonya’s lips, but no further. There is something delicious, delectable, about the truth. She has been with Valentin for over a year now. She was with him yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that and before that. They are still careful, of course. She is always home by teatime. But she wonders now if she has been waiting to be discovered, for upon discovery, a choice must be made.
This life, or him.
This palace, or that cellar.
Royalty, or revolution.
Something turns, twists in her gut.
‘I understand a certain infatuation. The boy turns heads.’ Natalya makes a sound. A resigned laugh. ‘Many of his past – let us call them admirers, as well – have donated handsomely to his cause.’
‘I have not given him a kopeck,’ says Tonya stoutly.
‘Oh, darling, he doesn’t love you. Men like him, they are in love with something greater, something more perfect, than any one person could be.’
‘And if I love him?’
Natalya’s smile widens, splits at the edges. ‘So that’s how it is.’
A sharp silence descends.
Tonya’s hand on the plate is unsteady. The cake is sawdust in her mouth. Still she wills herself not to avert her eyes from the Countess; not to stand down.