Robin Paige: Death in Hyde Park

Ignoring the rain that dripped down his collar, Yuri smiled to himself at the thought of the heroic deed he was about to perform, with the assistance of a new friend named Rasnokov, who had helped him gather and assemble the materials. He, Yuri Messenko, was about to send King Edward of England to join the elite group that had gone before: the premier of Spain, Empress Elizabeth of Austria, King Umberto of Italy, and President McKinley of the United States, all four of whom had been assassinated in the past four years.

And who better than he? Yuri thought jubilantly. He had come to London from the slums of Manchester three years before, his father a Ukranian refugee who worked as a boot-maker, his English mother long since worn down by the twin devils of pregnancy and poverty. He had worked diligently, doing his part to keep the Anarchist Clarion alive and thriving, helping to print and distribute the newspaper throughout London, taking leaflets to meetings, and working among the filthy warrens of the poor, where a dozen hungry men, women, and children crowded together in a single fetid room, desperate for work, sickened by the unsanitary conditions, with no hope for a better future. Assassination was a moral response to the immoral institutions and governments that spawned such horrors.

Yuri glanced across the crowded park, but he did not see the many celebrants gathered there, or the heroic statue of Achilles, erected in honor of the Duke of Wellington and cast from cannon captured at Waterloo, where the Iron Duke had defeated the Emperor Napoleon. He did not see, either, the watchful man, thickset and wearing brown tweeds and a brown derby hat, who had followed him through the park since he had entered at Speakers’ Corner. Instead, he was gazing into a future when there would be no more coronations and no more emperors and dukes, when the yoke of capitalist oppression had been thrown off and the downtrodden peoples of the world had risen up, glorious and free.

Of course, Yuri did not work just for the Cause, although that was uppermost in his loyalties. He also worked for love, for the love of a female comrade named Charlotte Conway, who was the editor of the Clarion and, in everyone’s estimation, the most dedicated member of the group. As he strode purposefully through the Park, he thought with pleasure of the look on Lottie’s face when she learned that it had been he, Yuri, who had carried out this momentous work, who had rid the world of But Yuri Messenko did not finish his thought, or his task, either. He had barely reached Hyde Park Corner when it seemed that someone called his name. He turned, tripped over a stone, and pitched forward upon his satchel. Instantly, it exploded, the blast ripping Yuri into little pieces and scattering them across the ground, under the triumphant sword and victorious gaze of the bronze Achilles.

Charlotte Conway pulled the sheet of paper out of her typewriter, put it on the desk in front of her, and reached for her pencil to make revisions. It was nearly 10 A.M. on Wednesday morning, and she needed to finish the article-the story of Yuri Messenko’s funeral the day before-in time for Ivan to set up and print it. The Anarchist Clarion was scheduled to come out on Friday, although things were always in such chaos in the newspaper’s office that to get it out at all seemed a miracle.

Charlotte reached for a loose hairpin and pinned it through the mop of dark hair piled carelessly on top of her head. She had been astonished when she heard what had happened in Hyde Park on the previous Saturday. She had not known Yuri especially well-no better, that is, than she knew Ivan and Pierre, who also worked for the Clarion, or any of the other comrades in their Hampstead Road cell. Since the upheavals in Spain and France, attendance at meetings had been irregular and people kept to themselves, fearing that they might be turned in by one of the police spies that swarmed everywhere. But the Yuri who had run errands and helped Ivan with the press had seemed far more idealistic than militant, and while he might not have been very bright, he had always seemed much more interested in changing people’s lives for the better than in blowing things up. But one never knew what lay hidden in another’s heart. Obviously, there had been a streak of dark violence somewhere within Yuri’s depths that she had never glimpsed.

Charlotte took out a cigarette, lit it, and leaned back in the rickety wooden chair, turning to glance out the grimy dormer window of the loft she used for her office, overlooking Hampstead Road. If those who had encouraged the boy-and she felt sure that trusting, dim-witted Yuri had not conceived or carried out the plot on his own-had imagined that an explosion on Coronation Day would encourage the workers to rise up against the rich and powerful, they had been very wrong. Two days after Yuri’s death, The Times had written, “Everywhere, the Anarchists are hated. To step out on the street is to encounter a storm of abuse heaped on Anarchist heads. Terrorism is not the way to a brave new world, and those who practice it only damage themselves and their cause.”

Charlotte rose and went to the window, gazing down at the stream of horse-drawn vehicles and motorcars passing along rainy Hampstead Road, nearly three stories below. She had joined the Anarchist movement some ten years before, when she was still in her teens and full of fury against the suffering and injustice she saw around her. Now, halfway through her twenties and with a decade’s experience behind her, she still believed in the movement’s purposes and was committed to doing all that she could to achieve them, but she knew in her heart that The Times was right. Terrorism was not the way to a brave new world. Attempting to blow up the King and Queen had been a terrible idea, and was bound to turn all London-all England, for that matter-against them.

Yet despite her cautions, Ivan and Pierre had insisted on trying to transform poor Yuri into a martyr. What few bits of his body the police had found and scooped up had been placed in a coffin, which was sealed shut and balanced across two chairs draped with red and black in the parlor of the meeting house a few blocks down Hampstead. But when Adam, Ivan, and the others carried the coffin out to the hearse, they had been met by an unruly crowd, booing and throwing rotten vegetables, scarcely restrained by a few policemen, who obviously had orders to let the crowd do all the damage it would. Another hostile crowd waited at St. John’s Wood, where Yuri was to be buried. Stepping forward to make a speech, Ivan had got no further than “Fellow Anarchists, we are here today to bury a brave man,” when he was rushed. A cordon of police pushed the crowd back, and the small group of mourners saw Yuri’s remains lowered into the grave without even the comfort of a revolutionary song. Charlotte, her eyes swimming with tears for the poor lad who had died in such a terrible way, had whispered a few words of farewell, and then made her way through the jeering crowd. She had long ago learned to keep on the lookout for police, but she was too upset to notice the stocky, bowler-hatted man with his hands in his pockets, his glance sharply predatory, his thin lips pressed tight together.

“Well, there you are,” Adam said, poking his blond head through the opening in the floor, where a wooden ladder led up from the second-floor print shop below. “How soon will the article be ready? Ivan has almost finished setting up the forms.” His pale blue eyes were serious. “You know how nervous Ivan can be-and today he’s worse than usual. He says somebody’s been watching him. Pierre says he’s being watched, too-but of course, Pierre always seems to feel a certain paranoia.” He paused, frowning. “What about you, Lottie? Have you been followed?”