Boris Akunin - The Coronation

‘We’ve let them get away . . .’ I wailed.

It was all over. I covered my face with my hands in order not to see the crowd, the bonfires, the dark dove-grey sky.

Fandorin shook me impatiently by the shoulder. ‘Don’t give up, Ziukin. Here’s the wasteland where the meeting was set. We’ll walk around, keep looking and wait for the dawn. Lind won’t go anywhere. He needs us as much as we need him.’

He was right, and I tried to take myself in hand and focus my mind.

‘The stone,’ I said, suddenly feeling anxious. ‘You haven’t lost the stone, have you?’

If we could just get them back alive, and then come what may. That was all I could think of at that moment.

‘No, it is here,’ said Fandorin, slapping himself on the chest.

We were being bumped and jostled from all sides, and he took firm hold of my arm.

‘You look to the right, Ziukin, and I shall look to the left. We’ll walk slowly. If you see the men we are looking for, do not shout, simply nudge me in the side.’

I had never walked arm-in-arm with a man before. Or indeed with a woman, with the exception of one brief affair a very long time before, when I was still very green and stupid. I will not recall it here – the story is really not worth the effort.

The nights are short in May. There was already a strip of pink along the horizon in the east, and the twilight was beginning to brighten. It was obvious that many people had camped here the evening before, and it was becoming more and more crowded around the campfires. Occasionally I could feel empty bottles under my feet. And the crowds kept on coming along the main road from Moscow.

On the left, beyond the barriers and lines of police, there was a wide open field covered with specially built fairground booths and pavilions with walls of freshly cut timber. That was probably where the tsar’s gifts to the people were being kept. I cringed at the thought of the pandemonium that would break out here in a few hours time, when this sea of people, their patience exhausted by hours of waiting, went flooding past the barriers.

We wandered from the barriers to the palace and back – once, twice, three times. It was already light, and every time it was harder to force our way through the ever-denser mass of bodies. I continually turned my head to and fro, surveying the half of the area that had been assigned to me, and I struggled with all my strength against a rising tide of despair.

Somewhere in the distance a bugle sounded a clamorous reveille, and I remembered that the Khodynsk army camps were not far away.

I suppose it must be seven o’clock, I thought, trying to recall exactly when reveille was. And at that very second I suddenly saw the familiar Calabrian hat with the civil servant’s cap beside it.

‘There they are!’ I howled, tugging on Fandorin’s sleeve with all my might. ‘Thank God!’

The Postman looked round, saw me and shouted: ‘Ziukin!’

His companion glanced round for a moment – just long enough for me to catch a glimpse of his spectacles and beard – and then they plunged into the very thickest part of the crowd, where it was jostling right up against the barriers.

‘After them!’ cried Erast Petrovich, giving me a furious shove.

There was a stout merchant in front of us and he simply would not make way. Without the slightest hesitation, Fandorin grabbed his collar with one hand and the hem of his long frock coat with the other, and threw him aside. We went dashing through the crowd, with Erast Petrovich leading the way. He carved through the throng like an admiralty launch slicing through the waves, leaving rolling breakers on each side. From time to time he jumped incredibly high into the air – obviously to avoid losing sight of Lind again.

‘They’re forcing their way through towards the Khodynsk Field!’ Erast Petrovch shouted to me. ‘That’s quite excellent! There’s no crowd there but a lot of police!’

We’ll catch them now, any moment now, I realised, and suddenly feltmystrength increase tenfold. I drewlevel with Fandorin and barked: ‘Make way there!’

Closer to the barriers the most prudent and patient of the spectators were standing absolutely chock-a-block, and our rate of progress slowed.

‘Move aside!’ I roared. ‘Police!’

‘Ha, there’s a cunning one!’

Someone punched me so hard in the side that everythingwent black and I gasped for breath.

Erast Petrovich took out his police whistle and blew it. The crowd reeled back and parted at the harsh sound, and we advanced a few more steps with relative ease, but then coarse caftans, pea jackets and peasant shirts closed back together again.

Lind and the Postman were very close now. I saw them duck under a barrier into the open space right in front of the police cordon. Aha, now they were caught!

I saw the hat lean across to the cap and whisper something into it.

The Postman turned back, waved his arms in the air and bellowed: ‘Good Orthodox people! Look! On that side they’re pouring in from the Vaganka! They’ve broken through! They’ll get all the mugs! Forward, lads!’

A single roar was vented from a thousand throats. ‘Hah, the cunning swine! We’ve been here all night, and they want to grab the lot! Like hell they will!’

I was suddenly swept forward by a force so irresistible that my feet were lifted off the ground. Everything around me started moving, and everyone scrabbled with their elbows, trying to force a way through to the tents and pavilions.

I heard whistles trilling and shots fired into the air ahead of me. Then someone roared through a megaphone: ‘Go back! Go back! You’ll all be crushed!’

A chorus of voices replied cheerfully: ‘Don’t you worry, yer ’onour! Press on, lads!’

A woman shrieked desperately.

Somehow I managed to find the ground with my feet and move along with the crowd. Fandorinwas no longer there beside me – he had been swept away somewhere to one side. I almost stumbled when I stepped on something soft and did not immediately realise that it was a person. I caught a glimpse of a trampled soldier’s white tunic under my feet, but it was impossible to help the fallen man as my hands were pinned tight against my sides.

Then bodies began falling more and more often, and I could only think of one thing: God forbid that I might lose my footing – there was no way I would ever get up again. To my left there was someone running along over the people’s shoulders and heads, with his black tarred boots twinkling. Suddenly he swayed, flung up his arms and went crashing down.

I was being carried straight towards the sharp corner of a planking pavilion covered in fresh splinters. I tried to veer a little to one side, but it was hopeless.

‘Take him!’ voices shouted from my right. ‘Take the little one!’

They were passing a boy of about eight from one pair of raised hands to another. He was gazing around in terror and sniffing with his bloody nose.

I was flung against the wall and my cheek dragged across the splinters, making the tears spurt from my eyes. I struck my temple against a carved window frame and as I started slipping down I had just enough time to think: It’s over. Now they will crush me.

Someone gripped me under the armpits and jerked me back onto my feet. Fandorin. I was already so stunned that his appearance did not surprise me in the least.

‘Brace your hands against the wall!’ he shouted. ‘Otherwise they’ll crush you!’

He swung his arm and smashed out the patterned shutter with a single blow of his fist. Then he picked me up by my sides and thrust me up with incredible strength so that I flew over the window sill rather than climbed it, and landed with a crash on a floor that smelled of fresh wood shavings. There were neat pyramids of coronation mugs standing all around me. Erast Petrovich hauled himself up and also climbed into the pavilion. One of his eyebrowswas split, his uniformwas tattered, his sabre had come halfway out of its scabbard.