Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

‘I’m fine, Sonechka, really,’ said Anna, getting slowly to her feet. She stood in front of her friend, swaying like a tipsy peasant, her right leg trembling in protest.

‘Sit down!’ said Sophia Perovskaya with the cool firmness of one used to being obeyed. For all her smallness of stature, her childlike face, she was an ‘illegal’ who had escaped from custody and was near the top of the police’s wanted list, a dedicated and resourceful revolutionary, cut from the same fine cloth as Mikhailov. Anna took the glass she offered her. But when at last she was led to bed in the adjoining room, sleep was out of the question, her mind racing in spite of the crushing tiredness she felt.

In the three months since the birth of ‘The People’s Will’ Anna had travelled thousands of miles on its behalf. Station waiting rooms, telegraph offices, a different house, a different bed almost every night, an agent and courier of its executive committee, for ever vigilant, for ever on the move. This was her new life. She had sworn an oath that bound her to the party, a pledge to reject family, love and friendship, to renounce personal hopes and desires for the people and, if necessary, to sacrifice her life for a revolution in Russia. She was glad of the certainty of knowing this was her future. Freedom and the love of comrades fired with the same revolutionary spirit were worth dying for. She had already turned her back on the prison of a loveless marriage with a good-for-nothing husband old enough to be her father, a drunkard who treated her like one of his chattels. The promises they had made to each other in the new party were profounder than her wedding vows, for in them lived the shared ideal of liberty.

And yet, and yet… as the days and miles slipped by — rattling down a seemingly endless piece of track with her thoughts — she could not entirely bury the memory of an English doctor who had looked at her with warmth and longing. She rolled their last words over and over in her mind and was sorry for the way they parted, sorry too that she had made no effort to explain that her father had given her away in marriage when she was only seventeen, like one of his serfs. And there were times when she let her imagination wander with pleasure to take comfort in the knowledge that she was desired as a woman should be.

As she lay there in Sophia Perovskaya’s narrow bed, she could hear the murmur of voices in the room next door. They must have closed the tunnel for the night. Most of the Moscow cell was living in the nearby city, travelling to and from the cottage as discreetly as possible at dawn and dusk. Anna had taken a room in a cheap guesthouse close to Kursk Station under an assumed name and with papers that had been prepared for her by the party.

The door opened and Sophia crept in with a candle. ‘Are you sleeping?’ she whispered softly.

‘No. I can’t.’

‘I will fetch you some soup.’

‘I will get up, Sonechka. I want to be with friends.’

There were five men round the table. Hartmann and two other comrades were bent over bowls of steaming broth, their clothes and hair stiff with mud. Goldenberg was sipping a glass of tea, and there, with his back to the door, was Alexander Mikhailov. He turned to look at her as she entered. ‘Anna, please,’ he said, and, half rising to his feet, offered her his chair. But Sophia Perovskaya had already pulled one to the table.

‘Are you all right? Sophia has told us what happened to you.’ Mikhailov’s voice was businesslike. ‘That’s a nasty bruise.’

Anna blushed a little and lifted a hand to her cheek. ‘I’m fine.’

‘I’ve been telling the others: our comrades in Alexandrovsk are almost ready. The explosive cylinders are in place and they have all they need to detonate them. But we can take dynamite from Odessa. The attempt there is off. The tsar’s train will leave from Simferopol instead.’

Anna felt Sophia Perovskaya’s tiny hand on her shoulder as she placed the bowl of vegetable broth in front of her.

‘We still have two chances to catch him but we need to work quickly now,’ said Mikhailov coolly. ‘We don’t have much time — three weeks at the most. The tsar will return to Petersburg before the end of the month. We’ll receive word when his train leaves the Crimea.’

For a few seconds there was silence at the table. After weeks of toiling in a tunnel no wider than a coffin, the day, the hour, was approaching when they would make their attempt on the emperor’s life. It was the party’s first objective. They had passed a formal death sentence: the tsar must be killed to free the nation. Only then would it be possible to hand supreme power to the people.

‘But we need more dynamite…’ Mikhailov said at last. He was looking pointedly at Goldenberg. ‘You must visit Vera Figner in Odessa and bring back all you can.’

‘But I’m needed here!’ Goldenberg insisted.

‘This is more important,’ said Sophia Perovskaya. ‘You must go first thing tomorrow.’

‘Why can’t Annushka go?’ he asked.

‘Of course she can’t!’ snapped Sophia.

‘I can,’ said Anna, putting down her spoon. ‘I’ll go.’

‘No!’ The bowls and glasses jumped as Sophia slammed her tiny fist on the table. ‘Look at her. Alexander—’

Mikhailov shrugged. ‘Perhaps two people would be better.’

How calculating he is, Anna thought. He had only suggested Goldenberg because she would offer to go too. Dearly though she cared for him, Grigory was not to be trusted with a task of this importance. She would make the arrangements and Grigory would carry the case of dynamite. They must leave at once — leave before dawn.

There was a queue at the telegraph reception where an elderly Jew was struggling to make himself understood to the clerk. Vera Figner was losing her temper, her foot tapping impatiently on the tiled floor, click, click, click, and every few seconds her eyes turned to the large post office clock on the opposite wall of the hall. She edged her way to the counter at last and the clerk slipped a telegram beneath the grille. She turned away with the ribbon of paper between her fingers, concern and excitement written in the fine lines of her face.

‘Well?’ Anna asked.

‘Here,’ and Vera pressed the message into her outstretched hand. ‘He’s ready to leave the Crimea.’

The telegram was in simple code: ‘PRICE OF FLOUR TWO ROUBLES. STOP. OUR PRICE FOUR. STOP.’

‘Fourth coach of the second train,’ whispered Vera, with a discreet shake of the head. ‘Let’s go now. It will be a miracle if we aren’t arrested. Can you imagine a more obvious code? You know the telegraphers are under orders to look out for strangely worded messages.’

She led Anna from the Central Post Office on to the busy street and hailed a cab. ‘There’s a train in half an hour. You must go at once.’

Anna had arrived in Odessa the day before. Vera’s cell had worked hard on its own plan for an attack, only to discover the tsar would not be travelling through the city after all. It had left them feeling flat and a little resentful that they had no further part to play, but it had been agreed that Goldenberg would leave with their supply of dynamite on an earlier train and meet Anna when she received word from the Crimea.

As the cab began to turn before the station, Vera leant closer: ‘Good luck, Annushka, good luck.’ Her voice shook with emotion. ‘Please be careful. The gendarmes have stepped up their patrols.’

‘Do you think they know something?’

Vera Figner gave a little shrug: ‘I don’t know, but be careful.’ And she bent to brush Anna’s cheek lightly with her lips.