Part 38 (1/2)

Hadfield shook his head crossly. 'She is fighting for the freedom of the people. You've said yourself that things are even worse here . . .'

'Since her friends murdered the last tsar, yes.'

'It will be a long struggle.'

'Don't be their mouthpiece,' Dobson snapped.

'I'm not.'

They glared at each other for a few seconds, until Hadfield leant forward to touch his friend's arm: 'You've done so much. I'm grateful.'

The correspondent's face softened a little. 'As your friend, I must tell you I think she is only capable of seeing her life and the world one way. You should have seen the certainty in her face. I tell you, Frederick, her mind runs on rails.'

'I love her,' said Hadfield simply. 'Please do not speak ill of her.' He rose again and walked over to the window. In the silence they could hear the sound of water slopping on the stone stairs and the grating of a mop bucket as the maid pushed it with her foot. And in the street below, a young man a clerk perhaps was moving out of the house opposite, loading the few sticks of furniture he possessed on to a cart.

'Did she speak of me?' Hadfield asked quietly.

'She gave me a note for you.' Dobson drew it from the breast pocket of his jacket. 'Here.'

Hadfield stared at his name written in her untidy hand on the envelope and he felt a surge of love and hope. He was in no hurry to open it for he knew Anna well enough to be sure her message would be short and to the point, even after a year and a half apart. But his friend was watching him and waiting, so he slit the envelope open with a table knife.

8.00 p.m. At the church.

Terse even by her standards, he thought, and offered the note to Dobson, who glanced at it then handed it back without a word.

When the correspondent had gone, Hadfield sat at the window waiting for the blue-grey hours to slip away. It snowed for a time in the afternoon, falling straight and wet, the temperature hovering just below freezing until dusk, when a frost began to form between the inner and outer panes. His thoughts were in constant motion, swirling as if carried on a wind to the future and back to the past then lifted up once again. Always her, always Anna and their daughter. He imagined them in his own reflection and in his breath on the gla.s.s, until his gaze slipped beyond to the darkness of the city. She had suffered so much. The humiliation of the birth at the prison, the distress of separation, trial and sentence a lifetime of penal servitude in the east. Her comrades in Switzerland had told him the little they knew from correspondence and, desperate always for word of her, he had scoured the papers every day for news, even when the little there was brought only pain and guilt. Baby Sophia was a year old already. At dark moments he wondered if he would ever find her and he was frightened that if he lost her he would lose Anna too.

At seven o'clock the maid brought him some bread and broth from the kitchen but he had no appet.i.te. A short time later he left the house, racing down the stairs, eager to be in the freezing air and on the move. Walking fast, almost running, slipping on the icy pavements, he made his way to the Obvodny Ca.n.a.l, factory workers trudging home with their heads bent against the first flurries of another snowfall. The dead hand of winter creeping across the city until the corruption of its ca.n.a.ls and streets and palaces was locked beneath a glittering white surface. But what did he care? It was a long way to the church and he must not be late. Run. Run faster. Run. And as he ran, he thought of the little room with its single mattress, of her finger pressed gently to his lips, of the silence and the stillness, the infinite stillness. He would help her escape from the shadow of the last years. Together. Together with Sophia. He held this feeling like a prayer, allowing it to fill his mind and body as he ran, careless of the snow and the curious glances he was drawing from pa.s.sers-by. On past the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and on to the embankment of the Neva. 'Hey, watch out there!' a cabbie shouted from his box as he weaved his way across the street to the riverside walk.

The scaffolding had gone and rising complete was the Church of St Boris and St Gleb. The Romanesque arch at the west front in pristine brick and stone and, crowning all, a lantern dome with figures of the apostles in its niches. The church built to commemorate the tsar's miraculous escape from an a.s.sa.s.sin's bullet had been finished at last, and yet empty and lifeless inside, it was of no more significance than a shattered colossus in a desert, boundless and bare. Hadfield stood panting at the bottom of the steps as a bell in one of the western towers chimed eight o'clock.

A market trader removes the planks from his makes.h.i.+ft stall in the square. In front of a pink warehouse opposite the church, night watchmen are gathering about a brazier. Workers from the textile mill and the brewery on the embankment trickle home, black and shapeless in their heavy coats. The gaslights seem softer and very yellow as the snow quickens and falls in thumbnail flakes. She is a little late but she will come. Small, upright, striding across the square, and he will drop from the steps to kiss her, squeezing her so tightly and perhaps she will release her pain and cry with happiness and new hope.

HISTORICAL NOTE AND SOURCES.

The plot and many of the characters in To Kill a Tsar are based on real people and events. The two years that pa.s.s in the book's pages mark the rise and fall of the first important revolutionary terrorist group of modern times, the Narodnaya Volya or The People's Will.

Terrorism is 'the threat of violence and the use of fear to coerce, persuade, and gain public attention' (Report of the Task Force on Disorders and Terrorism, Was.h.i.+ngton, DC, 1976). It is a form of armed propaganda in an age dominated by the ma.s.s media. We live at a time when terrorists can change the lives of millions, take countries to war, and command the respect and support of many by committing suicidal acts of violence. The seeds of this kind of ruthless direct action were sown in the second half of the nineteenth century in Imperial Russia. 'To attract the attention of the entire world, is that not in itself a victory?' the Russian revolutionary Georgi Plekhanov observed after the a.s.sa.s.sination of Alexander II.

Alexander's reign began in 1855 with a liberal reform that earned him the sobriquet of 'Tsar Liberator'. The emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs in 1861 freed twenty-three million peasants from a system of slavery that bound them to the land and deprived them of rights enjoyed by his other subjects. But the tsar's belief in his divine right to rule was unshakeable and attempts by nationalist and democratic movements to challenge it were ruthlessly suppressed across the empire. Minority languages such as Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Polish were restricted, newspapers, letters and literature were censored, trial by jury suspended and those who called for reform were imprisoned and exiled to Siberia. One of the characters in this story Nikolai Kibalchich spent almost three years in prison on a charge of lending a dangerous book to a peasant. A short time after his release he became a committed revolutionary and a member of The People's Will.

Most peasants were faithful subjects of the emperor but among the educated, in particular the young, there was active support for representative democracy and radical reform. The tsar's secret Third Section was formed with the support of the police and Corps of Gendarmes, to protect the autocracy from dissent. Its notorious headquarters was at Number 16 on the Fontanka Embankment.