Boris Akunin - The Coronation

He died in front of my very eyes, this strange and disagreeable gentleman.

It all happened so quickly, so very quickly.

The very instant the shots roared out, he was flung back against the cable.

He dropped his little revolver, clutched at the shaky handrail and froze on the spot, with his head thrown back. I caught a momentary glimpse of a white face, bisected by a black strip of moustache, before it disappeared behind the black mantle.

‘Erast Petrovich!’ I shouted, calling him by his given name and patronymic for the first time.

Or did I only mean to shout?

The precarious decking swayed beneath his feet. His head suddenly bobbed forward as if from a powerful jolt, his body began slumping, chest forward, over the cable, then swung round grotesquely – and the next instant it was already hurtling down, down, down.

The precious casket fell from my hands, struck a rock and split open. There was a flash of blinding sparks from the multicoloured facets of the diamonds, sapphires and emeralds, but I did not even glance at these incalculable riches as they scattered into the grass.

From the ravine there came the soft crunch of an impact, and I gasped. The black bundle went tumbling down the steep slope, gathering speed along the way and only ceasing its nauseous whirling motion at the very edge of the stream. It dropped one lifeless hand into the water and lay there, face down in the gravel.

I had not liked this man. Perhaps I had even hated him. In any case, I had wanted him to disappear from our lives once and for all. But I had not wished for his death.

His trade was risk, he toyed with danger constantly, but somehow I had never thought he could be killed. He had seemed immortal to me.

I do not know how long I stood there like that, gazing stiffly down. It cannot have been very long. But time seemed to rupture, to split apart, and I fell into the rent – back into the old, serene life that had ended abruptly exactly two weeks earlier.

Yes, that was a Monday too, the sixth of May.

We arrived in the ancient capital of the Russian state in the morning. Owing to the imminent coronation festivities, the Nikolai I Station was congested with traffic and our train was sent off via a transfer line to the Brest Station, which seemed to me a rather ill-judged decision, to say the least, on the part of the local authorities. I can only assume that a certain coolness in relations between His Highness Georgii Alexandrovich and His Highness Simeon Alexandrovich, the governor-general of Moscow, must have played some part in it. I can think of no other way to explain the humiliating half-hour wait on the points at the marshalling yard and the subsequent diversion of our special express train from the main station to a secondary one.

And we were not met on the platform by Simeon Alexandrovich himself, as protocol, tradition, family connection and, ultimately, simple respect for an elder brother should have required, but only by a member of the reception committee, a minister of the imperial court who, incidentally, immediately departed for the Nikolai I station to receive the Prince of Prussia. But since when has the heir to the Prussian throne been accorded more attention in Moscow than the uncle of His Majesty, the admiral-general of the Russian fleet and the second most senior of the grand dukes of the imperial family? Georgii Alexandrovich did not show it, but I think he felt no less indignant than I did at such a clear affront.

It was a good thing at least that Her Highness, the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Ioannovna, had stayed in St Petersburg – she is so zealous about the subtle points of ritual and maintaining the dignity of the royal family. The epidemic of measles that had laid low the four middle sons – Alexei Georgievich, Sergei Georgievich, Dmitry Georgievich and Konstantin Georgievich – prevented Her Highness, an exemplary and loving mother, from taking part in the coronation, the supreme event in the life of the state and the imperial family. There were, it is true, venomous tongues who claimed that Her Highness’s absence at the celebrations in Moscow was to be explained less by maternal love than by a reluctance to play the part of a mere extra at the triumph of the young tsarina. There was also mention of last year’s incident at the Christmas Ball, when the new empress suggested that the ladies of the royal family should establish a handicraft society, and that each of the grand duchesses should knit a warm cap for the little orphans at the Mariinsky Orphanage. Perhaps Ekaterina Ioannovna’s reaction to this proposal was a little too severe. It is even quite possible that since then relations between Her Highness and Her Majesty had not been entirely good. However, no provocation was intended by My Lady’s not coming to the coronation, I can vouch for that. Whatever Ekaterina Ioannovna’s feelings towards Her Majesty may be, under no circumstances would she ever presume to neglect her dynastic duty without a very serious reason. Her Highness’s sons really were ill.

That was sad of course but, as the common people say, every cloud has a silver lining, for the entire grand ducal court remained behind in St Petersburg with her, which significantly simplified the highly complex task facing me in connection with the temporary removal to the old capital. The court ladies were very upset that they would not see the festivities in Moscow and expressed their discontent – naturally, without transgressing the bounds of etiquette – but Ekaterina Ioannovna remained adamant: according to ceremonial procedure, a lesser court must remain where the majority of members of the grand ducal family are located, and the majority of the Georgieviches, as our branch of the imperial house is unofficially known, had stayed in St Petersburg.

Four members of the family made the journey to the coronation: Georgii Alexandrovich himself, his eldest and youngest sons and his only daughter, Xenia Georgievna.

As I have already said, I was only too pleased by the absence of the ladies and gentlemen of the court. The court steward, Prince Metitsky, and the manager of the court office, Privy Counsellor von Born, would only have hindered me in doing my job by sticking their noses into matters entirely beyond their comprehension. A good butler does not need nannies and overseers to help him cope with his responsibilities. And as for the ladies-in-waiting and maids of honour, I simply would not have known where to accommodate them, so wretchedly inadequate was the residence allocated by the coronation committee to the Green Court – as our household is known, from the colour of the grand duchess’s train. However, we will come to the matter of the residence later.

The removal from St Petersburg went smoothly. The train consisted of three carriages: the members of the royal family travelled in the first, the servants in the second, and all the necessary utensils and the luggage were transported in the third, so that I was constantly obliged to move from one carriage to another.

Immediately after our departure, His Highness Georgii Alexandrovich sat down to drink cognac with His Highness Pavel Georgievich and Gentleman of the Bedchamber Endlung. His Highness was pleased to drink eleven glasses, after which he felt tired and rested all the way to Moscow. Before he fell asleep, when he was already in his ‘cabin’, as he referred to his compartment, His Highness told me a little about a voyage to Sweden that had taken place twenty years earlier and made a great impression on him. The fact is, although Georgii Alexandrovich holds the rank of admiral-general, he has only ever been to sea on one occasion. The memories that he retains of this journey are most unpleasant, and he frequently refers to the French minister Colbert, who never sailed on a ship and yet transformed his country into a great maritime power. I have heard the story about the Swedish voyage many times, quite often enough to know it off by heart. The most dangerous part in it is the description of the storm off the coast of Gotland. Following the words ‘And then the captain yells out, “All hands to the pumps”’, His Highness is wont to roll his eyes up and swing his fist down hard onto the table. The same thing happened on this occasion, but there was no damage to the tablecloth and the tableware, since I had taken the timely measure of holding down the carafe and the glass.