Kate Furnivall: The Jewel of St Petersburg

After that she moved at a steadier pace. It didn’t take long to locate the river and set off along the narrow track that ran along its bank. Disjointed thoughts crashed around inside her head. If these hooded men were revolutionaries, what plans did they have? Were they just hiding out in Tesovo’s forest, or had they come here for a specific purpose? Who was their target? That last one wasn’t hard. It had to be Papa.

She clamped her lips together until they were bloodless in an effort to silence the shout of rage that roared inside her, and her feet speeded up again, weaving a jerky path through the overhanging branches.

A sound jolted her and she recognized it at once: the noise of a horse’s hooves splashing through water. Someone was coming upriver. It was shallow here, a silvery burble over a bed of stones, the morning sunlight flouncing off the eddies and swirling back up into the trees. She crouched, curled in a ball behind a bush, the skin stretched tight across her cheeks as if it had somehow shrunk in the last few hours.

LIEV POPKOV!”

The big man on the ugly flat-footed horse swung round at the sound of her voice. “Miss Valentina!” He was leading her horse, Dasha, behind.

The expression on his face under his black corkscrew curls surprised her. It was one of shock. Did she look that bad? Normally Liev Popkov was a young man of few words and even fewer expressions of emotion. He was several years older than herself, the son of her father’s Cossack stable master, and he seemed to have time and interest only for four-footed companions. He leapt out of the saddle and stomped in his long boots through the shallows. He towered over her as he seized her arm. It surprised her that he would touch her. He was only an outdoor servant, but she was far too grateful to him for bringing her a horse to object.

“I heard shots,” he growled.

“There are men in the forest with rifles.” Her words came out in gasps. “Quickly, we have to warn my father.”

He didn’t ask questions. He wasn’t that kind of person. His gaze scoured the forest, and when satisfied, he swept her up onto the back of her horse.

“What made you come up here?” she asked as he untied Dasha’s reins.

His massive shoulders shrugged, muscles stretching the greasy leather tunic. “Miss Katya came looking for you. I saw your horse was gone”-he rolled a hand fondly over the animal’s rump-“so I rode up. Found her tethered.” As he handed her the reins, his black eyes fixed on hers. “You well enough to ride?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t look good.”

She touched her cheek, felt blood and saw scarlet slither down her fingers. “I can ride.”

“Go slow. Your feet look bad.”

She gathered the reins in her hands and twitched Dasha’s head around. “Thank you, Liev. Spasibo.” With a brisk touch of her heels she set the horse into a canter, and together they raced off down the river, water scything like a rainbow around her.

She rode hard through the forest, with Liev Popkov and his big-boned animal tight on her trail. At one point a tree was down across their path, but she wasted no time finding a way around it. She heard an annoyed shout behind her but she didn’t stop, just put Dasha to it and lifted her into the jump. The horse soared over it, pleased with herself, and swerved to avoid the roots that writhed up from the black earth to trip the unwary.

They burst out of the forest fringe into the open, into the quiet sunlit somnolence of the landscape, a quilt of greens and golds, of fields, orchards, and pastureland that was spread out lazily before her. It made her want to cry with relief. Nothing had changed. Everything was safe. At the top of the slope she reined in her horse to give her a moment to breathe. She’d tumbled out of the forest nightmare back into the real world where the air was scented with ripening apples and the Ivanov mansion sat half a mile away at the heart of the estate, fat and contented as a honey-colored cat in front of a stove. It quickened something inside her and, like Dasha, she breathed more freely. She shortened the reins, eager to ride on.

“That jump was dangerous. You take risks.”

She glanced to her right. The young Cossack and his horse were silhouetted against the sun, solid as a rock.

“It was the quickest way,” she pointed out.

“You’re already hurt.”

“I managed.”

He shook his head. “Have you ever been whipped?” he demanded.

“What?”

“That jump was difficult. If you had fallen off, your father would have had me whipped with the knout.”

Valentina’s mouth dropped open. A knout was a rawhide whip, often with metal barbs attached, and although its use had been abolished in Russia, it still prevailed to enforce discipline. One hung coiled like a sleeping snake on the wall of her father’s workroom. For a moment they stared at each other, and the sunlight suddenly seemed lost to her. What must it be like to live each day in fear of a whip? Liev’s features were heavy and solemn, already set in grooves despite his young age, as if there had been little in his life to smile about. She felt ashamed and embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He grunted.

She was the first to look away. She stroked Dasha’s feathery ears, then clicked her tongue to set her off at a gallop down the grassy slope. The air buffeted Valentina’s lungs and dragged at long strands of her hair, and one stirrup threatened to snap loose from her bare foot. She leaned forward, flat along Dasha’s back, urging her to a faster pace.

The roar of an explosion shattered the silence when they were only halfway down the slope. One end of the house shuddered and seemed to leap up into the air, before it disintegrated inside a gray cloud of smoke. Valentina screamed.

N YET! NO! THE WORD FILLED VALENTINA’S MIND, ECHOING inside it till there was no room for other words. Nyet! No room for words like blood and pain. No room for death.

Their horses skidded to a halt on the gravel in front of the house and Valentina threw herself out of the saddle. There was noise everywhere. People frantic, servants running, shouting, crying. Panic leaping from face to face; the air was thick and heavy with it. There was the stink of smoke, shattered glass underfoot. Riderless horses hurtled into view from the stables, skittering in terror. She heard the word bomb repeated again and again.

“Papa!” she screamed.

Her father’s study was at that end where the smoke was pouring out, swallowing the house in greedy gulps. Each morning when at Tesovo, her father would go into his study to write his ministerial letters immediately after finishing his newspaper over breakfast. Her heart lurched as she started to fly toward the crumpled wing of the building, but after only two steps she was jerked to a stop. A fist like an anchor chain had seized her wrist.

“Liev,” she screamed, “let go of me!”

“Nyet.”

“I have to see if Papa is-”

“ Nyet. It’s not safe.”

His filthy fingernails dug deep into her white skin while in his other hand lay the reins of the two horses. Dasha was prancing wildly, nostrils flared, but the ugly one just stood flat-footed, its curious brown eyes fixed on Popkov.

She stopped struggling and drew herself up to her full height. “I order you to release me, Liev Popkov.”

He looked down at her imperious figure. “Or what? You’ll have me whipped?”

At that moment Valentina caught sight of her father’s back-she recognized his navy frock coat-stumbling into the dense pall of rubble dust.