Stuart Kaminsky - Tarnished Icons

Saint Petersburg, Russia, 1862

A woman had been brutally murdered. She was the baroness Anastasia Volodov-Kronof.

The baroness was a woman of great wealth and social power who threw an annual celebration with wine, wild fowl, and an assortment of cakes in the park near the new Hermitage. All were invited. The tradition had begun eight years ago when her husband died. The celebration on the anniversary of the baron’s death was considered to be either a sign of respect for a loyal officer of the czar or a sign of relief that the widow was finally free of an abusive martinet. She had married the baron when she was a girl of fourteen and he an officer of thirty.

Her death did not sit well with the populace of Saint Petersburg in 1862. She was a benefactor, an emulator of the aristocracy of France that had repeatedly rejected her. Her husband was an official hero of his country. Though she lived like a grand dame of Western Europe, holding salons for young artists, she, in quite general but sincere terms, espoused the causes of justice, freedom for all, and an eventual abolition of some of the more unjust practices of the aristocracy.

It was said that Czar Alexander himself had invited the baroness to all palace parties and looked upon her with favor. In turn, she had prepared a will in which a very valuable gold wolf the size of a small dog, encrusted with jewels, would be given to the royal family upon her death for inclusion in the growing Hermitage collection. The wolf, a central figure of her former husband’s crest, had been commissioned by the late baron and was completed according to the baron’s instructions by a young French jeweler named Emile Toussaint.

Accused of the baroness’s violent murder was a thin young man she had taken under her broad wing, into her ample bosom, and under the silk sheets of her French bed. In addition to her murder, the young man and three of his comrades were also accused of taking the gold wolf to sell to a wealthy foreign monarch to support a small group of anticzarist revolutionaries.

The young man was twenty-five, one of the new breed who wore long hair, mustaches, and black coats, and uttered proclamations about the rights of serfs. He was the grandson of a Decembrist, one of the officers who had staged a revolt against Czar Nicholas. His grandfather, Peotor Marlovov, had returned to Saint Petersburg from Siberia five years earlier, in 1857, under pardon from the czar. The old man had planted in his grandson the seed of revolution.

The thin young man and his three comrades, two of whom were army officers, were shackled together and flanked by a dozen armed soldiers as they marched through Senate Square by the Neva River. The strange-looking little man who was in charge of the armed escort marched next to Marlovov and his comrades. The two were a remarkable contrast. Marlovov, in spite of or because of his hard youth in Siberia, stood tall, thin, erect, and handsomely confident with his hair cut stylishly long in the French manner. If any look dominated his face, it was superiority. Though he had been named Vladimir, he called himself Louis.

The little man at his side was another matter altogether. He had great difficulty keeping up with the long-striding prisoner and the brightly uniformed guards.

His name was Colonel Dieter Fritch, a German in the service of the czar. Fritch, well dressed in a white uniform, was about forty, fat, and clean-shaven. His hair was short and he had a large round head that was unusually bulbous in the back. His soft, round, snub-nosed face was yellowish in color as if he had seldom ventured out into the daylight. He wore a perpetual knowing smile as if he kept a secret that he might some day share with you. There was something decidedly feminine about the little man except for his eyes below white lashes, moist eyes that were quite serious.

“If we were to walk a bit slower,” said Fritch with a decidedly German accent, “I would not breathe so heavily and we could talk.”

It was summer, and the trees were blocking a view of the admiralty facade.

Louis preened his mustache, shrugged slightly, and glanced down at the ridiculous little man. The other prisoners and the two armed guards slowed just a bit.

“Thank you,” said Fritch, producing a large handkerchief and mopping his brow. “May we sit briefly?”

Louis sighed with annoyance and looked at his comrades and the guards, one of whom looked at the little German and nodded. The shackled friends strode to a concrete balustrade and sat. The German sat beside Louis. The soldiers stood.

The leader of the armed escort, a young lieutenant in the red uniform of the royal family’s personal guard, said, “Ten minutes, Colonel. No more. We’ll be in trouble if we don’t deliver them for trial on time.”

The wooden benches would be packed to see the men who had murdered the popular baroness Volodov-Kronof.

“You have not confessed to the murder,” said Colonel Fritch, turning his large eyes on the handsome young poet. The other three accused looked straight ahead in marble silence. “You have refused to talk to a lawyer. You refuse to admit your guilt. You refuse to proclaim your innocence. You should be easy to convict and hang. Judge Volorov, at his own request, has been assigned to this case. He was a personal friend of the baroness’s. He holds a long-standing grudge against the Decembrists and their survivors. He has no fondness for European dilettantes.”

“Is that what you take me for?” asked the young man with a sigh.

“It is what the judge and jury will take you for,” said Fritch. “And, I must confess, it is what you appear to be.”

“You have read my poetry?” asked the young man, crossing his legs.

“Some. The thin book published by the baroness.”

“And?” asked the young man.

“You are more interested in the review of your work by a foreign member of the czar’s staff than in possibly saving your life?”

“Your assessment of my work?” the young man repeated.

“Self-indulgent. Mediocre. Unoriginal. Insincere,” said Fritch. “But what do I know? I’m a soldier, not a critic of poetry.”

“Went to the theater,” the young man said, looking toward the river. “The play was about the Russian fool Filatka. Laughed a lot. They had a vaudeville show as well, full of amusing verse lampooning lawyers, so outspoken that I wondered how it got past the censor. Civil servants are such swine. … You won’t catch clods like them going to the theater, not even if they’re given free tickets.”

“Gogol, ‘Diary of a Madman,’” said Fritch, recognizing the quotation, “but you left out merchants and newspapermen who criticize everything.”

The young man looked at the colonel with a new respect.

“You do read.”

“With slowly growing skill,” said Fritch. “And I send people to prison, into exile, or before a firing squad. Occasionally I help them if they are innocent. Are you innocent of this murder, Vladimir Marlovov?”

“I am guilty of the murder,” the young man said with little interest. “These three others are completely innocent. And I prefer to be called Louis.”

“More French,” said Colonel Fritch.

“Five more minutes,” said the lieutenant.

A warm wind blew down the corridor of buildings.

One of the two soldiers under arrest, a young man with wild hair and in need of a shave, muttered, “We are all equally responsible for what took place.”

“They mean to kill us,” said Marlovov with a shrug. “There is little we can do.”