Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

‘You thought she’d escape because she’s a woman and an aristocrat?’ Again he paused, staring at her intently for a few seconds more. Then he said: ‘But you will not be executed. You will be saved by your baby. Yes, of course I know. Your unborn child is deemed by the law an innocent. But I know, too, what happens in such cases. Your baby will be taken from you when it’s born and placed in an orphanage. It will grow up knowing nothing of its mother and father. A Class 14 clerk will give your baby a name and an institution will be responsible for its wellbeing. Have you visited a city orphanage? Can you imagine your child in such a place?’

Anna felt a sharp, breathless pain as if his white hands were squeezing her heart. She had presumed her baby would have followed her into exile.

‘I think it’s barbaric,’ he added, ‘but what I think counts for nothing. I want you to understand the choice you must make is not just for yourself but for your unborn child. What life can your child look forward to in an orphanage?’

She did not answer, her face rigid and white.

‘It is a painful choice. Whatever happens, you will go to prison for life. It is possible, if you help me, that I may be able to arrange for your child to be given to your family, or even Dr Hadfield’s. Then it would know of its mother and father and know love…’

It was as if he was talking to her from a great distance, the subtle sibilant hiss of the snake in the garden. What was she prepared to risk for her child? How could they threaten to separate a child from its mother? She wanted to release the pain, to scream, to throw her tea glass against the wall.

‘…you must have time to think…’ He was still speaking to her. ‘It is a choice you make for your child. What is most important to you?’

For many days Hadfield saw only the warders and a doctor who stubbornly refused to say more than he deemed professionally necessary. The beating had left him with superficial injuries, but fearful the bruises would precipitate a scandal, the governor of the Preliminary had placed him under close medical supervision.

For half an hour each day, he shuffled in silence round the edge of the frozen exercise yard with the other inmates. He listened to messages painstakingly tapped on the pipes and memorised the names of ‘politicals’ from every corner of the empire and the distinctive chinking rhythm of their spoons. It was from one of these he learnt of Sophia Perovskaya’s arrest.

‘Is there word of Anna Kovalenko?’ he tapped slowly on his own pipe. No one had news of her. But after that he asked the question every day.

It was the powerlessness he found most oppressive. His fate in the hands of others, and even the smallest details of his life determined without reference to him. Finally, in his third week of captivity, he received a visitor.

His Excellency General Glen was standing by the mantelpiece in the governor’s office, resplendent in the Finance Ministry uniform, the gold and silver stars on his coat twinkling in the light of a lively fire. The governor was at his side but withdrew with a respectful nod of the head.

Hadfield stood in the middle of the rug, conscious of the sorry figure he cut in his prison greys, his hand clutching the top of his trousers. General Glen did not move from the fire, pity and contempt written in the lines of his face. Only when the door closed quietly behind the governor did he speak.

‘What have they done to you?’

‘This?’ asked Hadfield, touching the yellow bruises on his cheek and about his eyes. ‘It’s not as bad as it appears.’

‘Pity. Damn it, you deserve it.’

They stood gazing at each other in awkward silence. Hadfield wanted to say he was sorry but he was sure it would be like lighting a blue touchpaper.

But an apology was what the general was waiting to hear. ‘What do you say for yourself, sir?’

‘That I deeply regret the pain and the embarrassment I have caused you and my aunt after all the kindness you have shown me.’

‘But why, sir? Why?’ The muscles in the general’s face were twitching as he fought to hold his anger in check. ‘You’ve disappointed everyone. The ambassador, the British government… Lord Dufferin was obliged to assure the emperor that no one at the embassy had the slightest inkling you were involved with these people, this woman… and I have had to apologise to His Majesty. Lady Dufferin feels you betrayed her trust. We all do. Explain yourself, sir.’

Hadfield took a deep breath, as if collecting his thoughts, but there was nothing he wished to say. He could not speak of his feelings. There was no need. A ferocious diatribe burst from his uncle like warm champagne from a bottle: the disgrace his nephew had brought upon him, his aunt’s pain and the disappointment of his cousin Alexandra. ‘And your mother. Did you think of her? How could you allow yourself to be deceived by this Romanko woman?’

‘Do you know if she is still—’

‘Your mistress is not my concern.’

‘Don’t call her that.’

General Glen looked away for a few seconds, his face puce, hands balled, as if struggling to contain an urge to punch his nephew. ‘My only concern is that we avoid a public trial,’ he said at last. ‘We’re going to have to dress this up as an unfortunate affair of the heart, of course, a dangerous infatuation.’

‘Of course.’

General Glen took a menacing step closer: ‘Damn fool. I’m only doing this for your mother and your aunt’s sake.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You have your aunt and cousin to thank for my presence here today.’

Hadfield nodded. ‘Please give them my—’

‘There is no reason to be optimistic,’ said the general, cutting across him impatiently. ‘The Ministry of Justice is pressing for trial and an exemplary sentence. You are fortunate Lord Dufferin is still willing to speak on your behalf as a British subject.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘I don’t want your thanks, sir. I want to see the back of you.’ He stared at Hadfield for a moment, then walked over to the governor’s desk and sat down. ‘Who was responsible for those?’ he asked, pointing at Hadfield’s face.

‘An officer of the Gendarme Corps.’

The general listened to a description of the attack with his head bent, turning the signet ring on his right hand distractedly, interrupting only once to check and make a note of Barclay’s name.

‘Not the behaviour of a proper gentleman,’ he observed dryly when his nephew had finished. ‘But he may have unwittingly done you a good turn. And this fellow Dobrshinsky?’

‘I haven’t seen him for two or three weeks.’

‘Did he strike you? Is there anything I should know about his conduct?’

For a fleeting moment, an image of the special investigator’s pallid face, his small brown eyes and trembling hands, flitted through Hadfield’s mind. He dismissed the thought at once.

‘Nothing? Damn fellow,’ said General Glen, rising from his chair. ‘It was his job to prevent this whole sorry business.’ There the interview ended, cold, businesslike, without affection and with the presumption their paths would not cross again.

Within a few days the emptiness of the prison filled his mind once more. The only relief came with the patient tapping of the pipes. More arrests, and there was to be a trial in the court building next to the prison. One of the warders was unable to contain his excitement.

‘Tomorrow. They’re here in the prison already. I’ve been to take a look at Zhelyabov. Is it true he was sleeping with the aristocrat?’ But he knew nothing of a Kovalenko or a Romanko.

Hadfield heard his first word of Anna the following morning as the courtroom was beginning to fill. Clink, clink, clink. A frenzy of tapping and a bittersweet message for the doctor: ‘Anna sends love.’