Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

‘Annushka, you know? You saw? We’ve done it,’ said Vera, taking her coat.

And they led her through to the sitting room where Praskovia performed a little jig about the floor: ‘Dance with me. What is the matter? You’re tired. Sit down. Have you seen Sophia?’

Vera sat with her on the couch and spoke breathlessly to them all of the heavy burden that had lifted from their shoulders. ‘The tsar has atoned for the blood of our martyrs with his own blood. There will be a new Russia, a better future.’

‘And the rest of Europe — Vienna, Berlin — we have lit a torch for freedom everywhere,’ said Frolenko.

‘Can’t you sense the excitement of the people?’ said Praskovia, wiping tears from her face. ‘They cannot refuse us free elections now. And in time they must free our prisoners.’

Anna watched and listened to their talk of liberty and the future with a dull ache in her chest until she could stand no more of it and left the room. She curled up on the bed she had shared the night before with Sophia, hoping they would leave her alone. But, after a while, Vera came to find her: ‘Annushka, help us celebrate. We have some wine.’

‘No, Vera, please, I want to be alone.’

‘But you must, we’ve done this together.’

‘Yes. Together…’ Anna could not contain herself any longer. ‘But it’s the end, Vera!’ And she burst into tears.

‘The end of what?’

But Anna would not say.

Hadfield had heard the first screams in the middle of the afternoon. They were followed by a frenzy of tapping on the heating pipes. By the evening he knew: the tsar was dead and the warders were going to punish the ‘politicals’. Some prisoners shouted protests at the abuse of their comrades and banged on their cell doors with tin plates, but then they received a visit too. Hadfield lay on his bed trying to block the empty echo of the prison from his mind, the clatter of boots on the landing outside, the shouts, the screams, the grey soullessness of it all. Would they want to punish him too? He did not care. He had made his choice and kept what he knew hidden. He did not regret that choice, only that it had been necessary to make one. The tsar was not an evil man but as much a prisoner of family and circumstance as everyone else. He could picture him at the bedside of the Finnish soldier, his brown eyes full of pain and bewilderment. And others must have died with him too. What part had Anna played in those deaths? Was she safe? He wanted to hold her, to feel the warmth of her skin.

Heavy footsteps dragged him back to the here and now. Three men in boots, a conspiratorial murmur of voices on the landing, a jangle of keys. He sensed a hush on the wing like the stillness after a heavy snowfall. He was not surprised when they stopped at his door, but he was surprised when Major Vladimir Barclay stepped inside his cell. The man’s face was red raw, his hair and eyebrows scorched, and there were dark patches of blood on his blue uniform jacket.

‘You were there?’

‘Yes…’ Barclay’s voice cracked a little. It was plain from his grim expression that he had not come to speak but to punish. Turning to the burly warders at his back, he gave a slight nod then stepped aside. The door slammed shut and they advanced towards Hadfield, one with a broad leather belt in his hand and the other with a cane.

Hadfield jumped to his feet. It occurred to him that he was about to enjoy the dubious distinction of being beaten by both sides.

The first man swung with the belt but Hadfield caught it with his left hand, yanking him forward and punching the side of his face with his right. He connected well. But the other warder had climbed on to the bed and began laying about him with the cane. Hadfield dived for his legs. His shins struck the metal bed frame but his arms closed about the warder’s knees in a perfect tackle. And he tumbled backwards heavily like a tree, turning a little in a desperate effort to break his fall with his arm. But Hadfield was left prostrate on the bed and the other warder was on top of him before he had a chance to rise.

It did not last long. They punched him in the face until he was still, his eyes swollen, his lip split, then they beat him across the back and buttocks with the cane. And when it was over Barclay came to stand above him for a moment.

‘That is in case you manage to escape responsibility.’ He spat on Hadfield. ‘Now, physician, you can heal yourself.’

The following day the party posted a notice in the city.

Alexander the Tyrant has been killed by us, Socialists. He did not listen to the people’s tears. A tsar should be a good shepherd but Alexander II was a ravening wolf. The party has taken the first step, and under its guidance workers should rise to claim their freedom.

But there were no barricades or demonstrations in the streets, no general rejoicing, no one heeded the call to revolution. St Petersburg was subdued, even a little fearful, the churches full of mourners and those seeking the comfort of the old order. People with a living to make went about their business as always.

At the apartment on the Voznesensky, members of the executive committee composed another manifesto, to be addressed this time to the new tsar.

What were they thinking? Anna asked herself as she listened to them argue over the party’s demands. They were careless, drunk with their own sense of importance. The first of the bombers was in police custody. It was only a matter of time before those who helped him were there too.

Her fears were well-founded: that night, just as the committee’s call for ‘freedom’ and ‘reconciliation’ was being printed, ‘the white terror’ began in earnest. In the early hours, the police broke down the doors of the apartment in Telezhnaya Street. Comrade Sablin shot himself and Comrade Gelfman was arrested. And later that morning a member of the bombing party was taken. On the 4th they raided the cheese shop. The party’s chief propagandist, Comrade Tikhomirov, began wearing black and visiting churches to pray for the soul of the tsar.

On the night of the 6th there was a knock at the door of the apartment on the Voznesensky.

‘Verochka, may I spend the night with you?’ It was Sophia Perovskaya.

‘How can you ask that?’ Vera replied reproachfully.

Sophia looked exhausted, thinner, her face a distressing pallor, with dark rings about her blue eyes. No one had seen her since the death of the tsar. She had moved through the city from friend to friend, determined not to stay more than a night in one place.

‘Sonechka, you have as much right as any of us,’ said Anna, stepping forward to give her a hug.

But Sophia held her at arm’s length: ‘I have to ask. If they find me here they will hang you both too.’

‘I will shoot if they come, whether you’re here or not,’ replied Vera, and she pointed to the revolver she kept beside her bed when she slept.

That night Anna lay close to her friend. She could sense Sophia’s grief, the dark conviction that nothing would ever be the same, the time left counted in days. At a little before dawn, Sophia turned to her.

‘Annushka, why didn’t you tell me your doctor was in prison?’

‘You have your own sorrow.’

Sophia gave a sad smile and reached down to squeeze Anna’s hand.

The following morning, Sophia Perovskaya slipped away from the apartment without saying goodbye. Four days later she was arrested on the Nevsky Prospekt. Then Nikolai Kibalchich was betrayed by his landlady and his friend, Frolenko, was captured at his apartment too.