Barbara Cleverly - The Blood Royal

The princess headed towards a bureau, opened a drawer and took out a photograph. ‘Here. You may look at this. I cannot let you take it away — it’s the only photograph of Anna that I have left. It’s not very clear but it may be of help. You’ll see it was taken by an amateur — the grand duchess’s French master, I believe.’

Five young girls wearing long white dresses and ropes of pearls were caught, it seemed, informally, standing about holding croquet mallets in a woodland setting. They were clearly on friendly terms with the photographer; unusually, they were smiling into camera, their posture relaxed.

An idyllic moment of leisured innocence from a world so soon to be plunged into horror.

‘This was taken, oh, it must be eight years ago — you see all the girls are wearing their hair down. Not yet considered adults … still in the classroom.’ The princess began to pick out the Tsar’s daughters with a forefinger. ‘Now, let me see. I’ll try to get this right but they were peas in a pod, those girls. All very like their mother. And all dressed alike and grinning. Which is which? That one is certainly Anastasia. The shortest. Pretty little rascal. Now … Olga? Maria? Maria had fairer hair so the one on the right is almost certainly Maria. No mistaking the two arm-in-arm on the left. They are Tatiana and her friend Anna Petrovna. A spectacular pair, and didn’t they know it! Both tall, you see. It’s hard to tell from a sepia print, which never did Tatiana justice, but she had chestnut hair which contrasted intriguingly with Anna’s mop of jet-black hair.’ The princess’s voice faltered and she looked aside to hide her grief as she said quietly: ‘My niece was a handsome girl, was she not? In those days. Sadly, if you ever confront her, you will see that the years of privation and harsh treatment have taken a hideous toll.’

Lily’s eyes were drawn straight to the one girl who was not a Romanov. Anna’s full-busted figure made her royal friend appear willowy in contrast. A round face — pretty though rather chubby, Lily thought — was being turned away from the photographer in laughing protest but Lily sensed something more in the evasive game. Camera shy? No. The protective sweep of glossy dark hair being teasingly offered to the photographer suggested flirtation and Lily smiled to herself. After all these years, had she guessed Anna’s secret?

‘The French master? Was he attractive?’

The princess looked at her sharply. ‘Many thought so. The girls all adored him.’ She took the photograph from Lily and looked at it intently. ‘You must understand that, with her birth, wealth and royal connections, my niece was destined to make a good marriage. An English duke … a Pomeranian prince … something of that order.’ She sniffed. ‘But today, if you go looking for her, you might well find her working in a hotel kitchen. She is a law unto herself, my Anna. Never will listen to advice. One tries to help — she is one of us, after all, and may count on our loyalty and support to the death.’ She shrugged her shoulders to indicate that she had wasted her time. ‘Perhaps she will listen to you. If you go at once to her lodgings you will most probably find her there.’

She whispered an address into Lily’s ear before ringing for the butler. Her last words to her were murmured: ‘I fear she is something of a loose cannon whose movements are unpredictable and dangerous. Mind your toes, Miss Wentworth, should you find yourself treading the deck alongside Anna.’

Lily headed off to the north-east, guided by the stern bells of the Russian church in Moscow Court booming out on the far side of Hyde Park. They ceased on a dying peal, leaving an unnatural silence flooding down from the rooftops. This was a moment to enjoy — a moment of rare peace when the streets were empty of motor traffic and pedestrians. It would be short lived. Lily caught in the distance the notes of the military band playing for church parade in the middle of the park. Soon the huge crowds the ceremony attracted would be spilling back on to the streets again, spiritually refreshed and heading home or for the pub in search of bodily restoration.

‘It’s not far,’ the princess had said. ‘In the middle of that disgusting rookery off the Gloucester Road.’ She’d quivered with distaste. ‘They keep promising to knock it down and cleanse the area of riff-raff but what happens? Every year another street of houses is repaired and more ruffians move in. Do have a care, Miss Wentworth. Anna could do better for accommodation. Heaven knows, she’s not without influential contacts. It’s my opinion that she’s in the throes of some sort of self-imposed chatisement. Wallowing in degradation. I’ve offered help but all she will take from me is what I feel least able to give — references to her character when she seeks ever more demeaning posts. She remains in touch with Sasha, though they are no longer as close as they once were, I sense.’

Smells of roasting joints coming from kitchen quarters explained the deserted pavements. After lunch people would flock outside in their hundreds, dressed in their Sunday best. Visiting day in a sprawling capital. Families would be crossing London to see their friends and relations in distant suburbs. Lily wondered how Anna Petrovna — a mentally fragile and lonely Russian woman — was spending her Sabbath. Would she be back in her lair, lashing her tail in fury that her prey had got away? Planning her next assault on the English Establishment? Had Bacchus’s men dragged her off already for questioning? If so, Lily rather hoped their first question might be: ‘Why on earth are you trying to do harm to the country that offers you shelter?’ Or were they somewhere about the place, quietly watching the house?

Lily decided not to confront the woman, even if the opportunity arose. Sandilands wouldn’t thank her for muddying the waters. But there were other useful things she could do, if she could come and go unnoticed. She pulled her hat lower on her forehead.

She was entering a very mixed area. What her father would have called ‘Queen Anne in front, Mary-Anne behind’. Substantial Victorian facades progressed from family houses of some grandeur and single ownership to well-to-do business premises (Lily noted a firm of solicitors and a car dealer’s showroom) to apartment houses with ranks of front door bells and finally to lodging houses.

No vacancies . The signs were strong on the wing. As were English Gentlemen accommodated; No females; No foreigners; No travellers . Lily couldn’t think how a single migrating Russian girl had ever managed to find a toehold on this cliff face of forbidding respectability.

A left turn into Hogsmire Lane answered her question.

Hogsmire Lane didn’t live up to its bucolic name. It conjured up muddy fields and wild hedgerows a-froth with may blossom but here there was not a sign of foliage, flower or farm animal, though this must, at one time in the last hundred years, have defined the western outskirts of the city, its ragged line marking the place where the built-up town ran straight into the fields and hedges. Nor was it a ‘lane’, but a short and run-down street linking two grander ones, a left-over, left-behind, rotting backwater. It was not a thoroughfare in which the princess would ever have set foot and, modestly dressed though she was, Lily hesitated to walk down it herself. A narrow, heat-cracked road separated York stone flagged pavements that abutted the front walls of the narrow terraced houses. One or two of the houses were boarded up with plywood planks at door and window but, for the most part, panes of glass gleamed, a tribute to the elbow grease, newspaper and vinegar of the housewives. Front doorsteps, all nine inches of them, were recently donkey-stoned, proclaiming to whoever was passing that here resided a decent God- and neighbour-fearing family.