Kate Furnivall - The Jewel of St Petersburg

She stroked his hair. There would be problems; of course there would. The social order in St. Petersburg was unstable, but she had faith in the power of men like her father to bring it under control, of men like Captain Chernov to hold the line against the strikers. But above all she had faith in men like Jens to build a better world for the workers to live in. Arkin and his ferocious revolution would never succeed; it would just fade away to nothing, leaving the banners and the slogans to be pecked by the gulls that swept in silvery flocks low over the city.

She rested her hand on her stomach and imagined a delicate head with a mass of fine curls living inside her. To be a mother. The thought took her breath away. But it made a sensation that was warm and real beat inside her blood, a feeling that in a strange way she was now larger than herself. Not just physically, but in her love. She smiled, thinking of her own mother.

Elizaveta Ivanova had recently taken to traveling by train to Moscow to stay with an old school friend of hers. Sometimes for only one or two days, sometimes longer. She said she needed to escape from the city where her daughter had died, and certainly she always returned without the lines of tension on her forehead and without the dull sorrow in her eyes. Papa barely seemed to notice her mother’s absences, he was so involved in deals with Minister Davidov, but he had embraced Valentina warmly at her wedding and kissed her cheek with his blessing. The gesture meant much to her. Only her sister wasn’t there to share her joy.

Valentina turned on her side and curled herself around Jens’s sleeping form, entwining her limbs with his and inhaling the scent of his skin. “My husband,” she murmured.

Katya would have been happy for her.

RASPUTIN WAS RIGHT. VALENTINA COULD ADMIT IT NOW and laugh. It was a coincidence, nothing more, she told herself. After a winter that was milder than usual and a spring of relative peace in the factories, she gave birth to a daughter. Not just any daughter. As she held the little bundle of snuffles and tiny clutching fingers, she knew that this was the most perfect being ever created. How could she not be? Look at her father.

Valentina could not stop smiling. Or crying. She touched each eyelid, each wrinkled ear. She gazed at the plump little lips and the tiny heart-shaped chin. She loved the way Jens didn’t wait for Dr. Fedorin to open the bedroom door to him but entered with eager strides that stopped dead when he saw her and the child. She could see that however much he had prepared himself, he had no idea it would be like this. Like an earthquake inside him. And then the grin on his face, so wide she thought it would crack his cheeks. With the gentlest of movements, he sat on the bed.

“Valentina, are you-”

“I’m sore and battered,” she interrupted, “not a bit like shedding kittens.” She held his daughter out to him, and his arms enfolded the small bundle in a possessive embrace.

For a long time he held her, his head bent over, staring down at his daughter, at her flame-colored curls still damp on her head. Only when the tiny mouth popped open in a silent yawn did he laugh and look up at Valentina. The love in his eyes was naked and it felt as if they’d stepped out of this world.

“I hadn’t realized,” he said tenderly, “how my life was not complete before. Not without this child in it.” His voice was shaking. “She’s beautiful.”

Valentina smiled. “Let’s call her Lydia.”

STOP THE CAR!”

Valentina shouted the words to Jens as he steered the motorcar through the crush of traffic in St. Isaac’s Square. Rain was sheeting down, bounding off umbrellas and off the car’s roof, splashing in the gutters. Whenever it rained, Valentina noticed-even after more than five years of marriage-the way Jens’s quick eyes checked each drain they passed to ensure that it was clearing the water flow efficiently.

“Stop the car,” she said again. “Please.”

“What is it?”

They were driving back across the city, returning from a visit with Lydia to Valentina’s mother, but Jens had insisted they leave early because he did not want his wife and child on the roads after dark. She didn’t blame him. In February the daylight hours were short, and the mood of the city had grown ugly. It was bitterly cold, and nearly three years of war against Germany had brought terrible defeats and humiliation for Russia, with wounded soldiers pouring back home, unfed and uncared for, begging in the gutters. Public fury at the tsar had erupted not just in strikes this time but in barricades in the streets. Shops were destroyed, bricks were hurled through windows, and firebombs reduced businesses to rubble.

“Death to Capitalists” was the shout that echoed through the city.

Rationing was severe. There was a shortage of bread, no khleb to fill the empty bellies of the workers, no flour, no milk, no butter, no sugar. Queues formed outside bakeries and butcher shops from dawn to dusk in the bitter cold.

Valentina could feel the hatred in the air. Taste it like acid on her tongue. Eight million Russian soldiers killed, wounded or taken prisoner in the trenches, Tsarina Alexandra labeled a treacherous German whore by the masses, and Tsar Nicholas so out of touch that at this critical time he had left Petrograd to go to army headquarters. Petrograd . Even after three years, the new name for St. Petersburg still did not fit easily into Valentina’s mouth. It had been changed to avoid any contamination from the German-sounding word. Since the start of the war in 1914, anything and everything German was to be despised-including the tsar’s wife.

As soon as Jens stopped the car, Valentina jumped out and raced across the square, her coat plastered against her legs by the driving rain. She ran to the placati, the notice boards with newspapers and posters displayed for people to read. In this foul weather there was not the usual crowd huddled in front of them. That was why she’d seen it.

The flash of red. The scrap of scarf that Varenka had promised as a warning so long ago.

She had prepared herself for this moment- not yet, don’t let it be yet. Her hand reached out and she saw the rain spattering her glove, the wind snatching at torn posters that screamed POWER TO THE PEOPLE, and four crows hunched like black heathens on the cathedral dome behind. The strip of red material was nailed to the notice board, sodden and ragged, but it was there. Waiting for her to see it. She wrenched it off the board.

MAMA, YOU’RE ALL WET.”

As Valentina slid back into the car, Lydia’s small hands patted at her cheeks, wiping away the raindrops.

“What was that about?” Jens asked.

“It’s Varenka’s.” She held up the red piece of cloth. It dripped onto her lap.

Jens slowly shook his head. “After five years of nothing from her.”

“Jens, it’s a warning. She promised it as a sign of when the revolution was close. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember.” He stared grimly ahead through the windshield at the blurred figures scurrying through the rain. “Dear God, now the bloodletting will begin.”

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” JENS ASKED.

Valentina looked up from her sewing and smiled. He was on his knees on the floor, building a railway station out of wooden blocks with Lydia. At four years old her young face would crease with concentration as she balanced one on top of another, careful to imitate her father’s technique. She was wearing a navy velvet dress with lace collar and cuffs, but she had pushed up the cuffs and tucked her skirt into her underwear to stop it from getting in her way as she worked. Valentina sighed indulgently. Her flame-haired daughter wasn’t turning out quite as she expected. Tawny eyes that missed nothing and a determined preference for playing with model trains with her father instead of the magnificent dollhouse Valentina had bought for her last birthday.