Boris Akunin - The Coronation

And so I did not hear what Her Highness and Fandorin were talking about. But to judge from her flushed cheeks, she must have been thanking the mysterious gentleman again for saving her.

‘Where is His Highness?’ I asked Mademoiselle as soon as I recovered my breath.

‘I left him in ze . . .’ She clicked her fingers, trying to remember the word, but could not. ‘Ze quayside? Ze dock for ships?’

‘The arbour,’ I prompted her. ‘Let’s go together. His Highness must be feeling very frightened.’

Beyond the bushes there was a rather extensive lawn, with a lacy white wooden arbour standing at its centre.

When we did not find Mikhail Georgievich in it, we started calling for him, thinking that the grand duke must have decided to play hide and seek with us.

Our shouts brought Fandorin. He looked around on all sides and suddenly squatted down on his haunches, examining something in the grass.

Itwas the pink Chinese sugar lollipop, which had been crushed by some heavy object, probably a heel.

‘Damn, damn, damn!’ Fandorin exclaimed, striking himself on the thigh with his fist. ‘I ought to have foreseen this!’

1 Little Red Riding Hood.

2 And she went through the forest to see her grandmother.

3 Don’t point!

4 What do you want that rubbish for?

5 I just want it that’s all.

6 Get the grand duke away!

7 I‘m coming! I’m coming!

I shall not describe the events of the evening and the night that followed His Highness’s disappearance, because in effect there were no events as such. The primary concern of those who were aware of what had happened was to keep the matter secret, and so from the outside everything appeared as if nothing had happened at all, except for the constant ringing of the telephones and the over-reckless pace at which horsemen raced round the triangle formed by the Hermitage, the Petrovsky Palace and the governor general’s residence.

All of this carefully concealed but extremely frenetic (not to say chaotic) activity produced absolutely no result, since the most important thing remained unclear: who could havewanted to kidnap His Majesty’s little cousin and why? And the mystery was not cleared up until the morning, when a letter without any stamp arrived at the Hermitage together with the ordinary municipal post – the postman himself was unable to say how it could have got into his bag in that condition.

As a result of this letter the sovereign himself, having received his grateful Asian subjects His Highness the Emir of Bukhara and His Grace the Khan of Khiva in the morning, postponed a parade at the Khodynsk Field at the last moment on the pretext of the cold and rainyweather and, accompanied only by the head of the court police, travelled in complete secret in an ordinary closed carriage with his personal valet, Seleznyov, on the coach box to join us at the Hermitage. That was when this palace in the park demonstrated the two great advantages forwhich it had received its name – its remoteness and privacy.

His Majesty’s uncle the Grand Duke Kirill Alexandrovich and the Grand Duke Simeon Alexandrovich arrived in the same conspiratorial manner: the former came alone (his butler Luka Emelianovich was on the coach box) and the latter brought his adjutant, Prince Glinsky – the horses driven by the most highly respected of all living butlers, you might call him the elder of our trade, Foma Anikeevich.

Those in our house who knew about the emergency, apart from the family, were Mademoiselle Declique and I, the Englishmen, because in any case it would have been impossible to keep it secret from them, and Lieutenant Endlung, for the same reason and also because Pavel Georgievich had no secrets from his raffish friend. I did not explain anything to the servants living in the house and merely forbade them to leave the Hermitage for any reasonwhatever. As born court servants, they did not ask any questions. And the Moscowservants lodged above the stables were told that His Highness had gone to stay at Ilinskoe, the country palace of his uncle the governor general.

Naturally, Ekaterina Ioannovna in St Petersburg was not told anything. Why alarmHer Highness unnecessarily? And until the ominous letter arrived, we all still cherished the hope that some sort of misunderstanding had occurred and Mikhail Georgievich would soon return to the Hermitage unharmed and in good health.

Need I say that I barely slept a wink that night? I had terrible visions, each one worse than the one before. I imagined that His Highness had fallen into some invisible fissure overgrown with grass, and long after midnight I drove the servants out with blazing torches to search the park once again, telling them that Xenia Georgievna had lost a diamond earring. Then when I got back to my room, I suddenly imagined that Mikhail Georgievich had fallen victim to some monster of depravity who preyed on little boys, and my teeth started chattering in fright, so that I had to take valerian drops. But of course the assumption that seemed most likelywas that the grand duke had been abducted by accomplices of the man with the false beard known as Blizna or Scar. While we were fighting some of the bandits for Xenia Georgievna, others had carried off the defenceless Mikhail Georgievich – and this was made all the more likely by the discovery of apparently fresh tracks from the wheels of another carriage not far from the fateful lawn.

But even though this thought was less horrific than the ones I have already mentioned, it was still agony to me. How was His Highness feeling now, surrounded by malicious strangers? Mika, the delicate, pampered little boy who had grown up in the firm belief that everyone around him loved him and they were all his friends. He did not even know what fear was, because nothing more frightening than a gentle slap on the hindquarters had ever happened to him. His Highness was so open, so trusting!

I was afraid even to approach Mademoiselle. All evening she sat as if she had been turned to stone and did not even attempt to offer any excuses. She merely wrung her hands and bit her lips, once so hard that they bled – I saw it and wanted to give her my handkerchief, because she had not even noticed the trickle of scarlet droplets, but I decided against it, in order not to place her in an awkward situation. That night she did not sleep either – I saw light coming from under her door and heard the sound of footsteps. As soon as the Moscow chief of police, Lasovsky, had finished questioning her, Mademoiselle Declique locked herself in her room. Twice, even three times during the night I walked up to her door and listened. The governess was still pacing to and fro, as regularly as clockwork. I wanted very much to knock at the door on some pretext and tell her that no one blamed her for what had happened, and I actually admired her courage. But knocking on a lady’s door in the middle of the night is absolutely inconceivable. And in any case I would not have known how to talk to her.

The secret conference with the participation of His Majesty was held upstairs, in the small drawing room, as far away as possible from the Englishmen, who, with the tact typical of that nation, went out to walk in the garden as soon as His Majesty arrived, although the rain was simply lashing down and the weather not at all conducive to walking.

I served at the gathering. Naturally, it was quite impossible to allowany of the servants into this secret meeting, and in any case I would have regarded it as my duty and an obligation of honour to serve such brilliant company in person.

It is hard for the uninitiated to imagine the full complexity of this high art. It requires meticulous attention, unfailing deftness and – most important of all – total invisibility. It is as if one were transformed into a kind of shadow, an invisible man whom everyone very soon ceases to notice. Under no circumstances should one distract the members of an important conference with a sudden movement or sound, or even the unintentional gliding of a shadow across the table. At such moments I like to imagine that I am the disembodied master of the enchanted castle in the fairy tale The Scarlet Flower , regaling my dear guests: the drinks pour themselves into the glasses and cups; the matches flare up and are carried to the cigars without assistance from anyone; every now and then the ash that has accumulated in the ashtrays mysteriously disappears. When Simeon Alexandrovich dropped a pencil on the floor (His Highness is in the habit of constantly drawing little imps and cupids), I was on the alert. I did not crawl under the table, which would have attracted attention, but immediately handed the governor general another pencil, exactly the same, from behind his back.