Kate Furnivall - The Jewel of St Petersburg

A splash of scarlet capes and the gleam of sabers flashed as they sliced through the air. There was the whinny of horses and clatter of hooves. Jens felt a sense of doom, black and suffocating. The troops had been sent in. So the tsar had decided not to negotiate. There was the sound of shots. Panic and fear took hold as the street burst into motion, people trying to flee from the sabers but finding no space. Jens saw a young boy stumble and disappear under trampling feet. He forced Hero forward, barging a path with the horse’s broad chest, and opened a bubble of air for the boy to regain his feet.

He heard Popkov’s bellow of warning behind him and spun around. He ducked just in time to miss the sword aimed at his head as the Hussars on their mounts were slicing their way through the crowd, crimson staining their blades. Jens saw Popkov cornered against a wall, still on his horse but his arm drenched in blood, and a blond captain was raising his saber to strike a second time. The captain was Chernov. Jens kicked Hero into a leap forward, scattering strikers left and right as he dragged the horse’s head to the side at the last moment, slamming it into Chernov’s black stallion. The arc of the blade shifted. Just enough. Instead of striking Popkov across the throat, it sliced across his face with a force that should have ripped his head from his body.

Jens’s pulse was singing in his ears, and he sent his fist crashing into the captain’s chest, snapping ribs and toppling him from his saddle. Popkov had sagged forward, blood pumping down his horse’s neck, but Jens steadied the weight of him in the saddle with one hand and seized the loose reins in the other. His own horse needed no urging. Using the animal’s strength, Jens shouldered a path through the strikers who were trying to stand and fight. Iron bars against sabers and rifles was no equal contest, but they had numbers on their side. More and more saddles fell empty.

In a side street Jens dismounted quickly and touched Popkov’s shoulder. It shuddered. Still alive, thank God. Carefully he raised the Cossack’s head from the horse. Jesus Christ, it was a bloody mass of gore. Rage and sorrow ripped a hole in his own chest, and yet his hands were steady as he removed his scarf and bound it tightly around Popkov’s head, leaving just one good eye free. That eye, narrow and black, fought to focus, and the bulk of Popkov’s massive body swayed unsteadily on the horse’s back. He was barely conscious.

“Hold on, Popkov,” Jens said firmly. “I’ll get you home.”

He unlooped his belt and tied the Cossack’s wrists around the horse’s neck, then leapt up into Hero’s saddle with Popkov’s reins in his hands.

“Still getting in my way, Friis.”

Jens looked ahead. A man with a hard face and dressed in a long coat was standing in the middle of the road, rifle in hand, a small army of men behind him. All wore red armbands.

“Get out of my path, Arkin.” Jens had no time to argue with the bastard. He started to ride forward, leading Popkov’s horse behind.

Suddenly rifle shots sounded like thunder in the narrow street. It was the only sound Jens heard. No whinny. No squeal of pain. Hero just juddered, then collapsed under him in silence. Front legs first and then, after a brief struggle, the hindquarters.

“No, no, no!” Jens roared as he jumped from the saddle before it hit the ground and knelt at his horse’s head. He held the long nose in the crook of his arm but the dark eyes were already dull, the breath gone from the wide velvet nostrils. “No,” Jens bellowed, leapt from his knees, and threw himself at Arkin.

“I’ve been looking forward to this moment,” Arkin said with an odd twist of his mouth as he slammed his rifle butt against Jens’s head.

VALENTINA’S HAND SHOOK. NOT FOR LIEV POPKOV’S EYE, which lay in an enamel bowl on the kitchen table. Not for the blood he’d lost or the bone that showed white across his forehead in a diagonal line. Not for the effort it must have taken for him to get himself and his horse back to her with the news of what happened, nor for the death of Hero.

Her hand shook for Jens.

She’d bathed Popkov’s head and snipped out the smashed eyeball, swilling an antiseptic solution into the socket, and tipped enough vodka down him till he could speak.

“Arkin has got him,” he’d slurred.

Arkin has got him.

Her hand shook and she pictured Arkin’s knee in splinters from a bullet that came from Jens’s rifle. She poured herself a vodka.

JENS TASTED DRIED BLOOD IN HIS MOUTH. THAT WAS WHAT came first. Piece by piece more images slid back into place until his mind started to turn, slowly at first, then faster, gathering speed, racing ahead of him, crashing into things, wrenching his thoughts out of his head. He opened his eyes.

He was in a prison cell.

A dull yellow light was caged inside a metal grille on the ceiling. It never went out. A metal door with an observation hatch at eye level and a food hatch at floor level was the only thing of interest in the tiny room. Brick walls, a bucket in one corner, an enameled bowl in another, and the narrow cot he was lying on. A bare stinking mattress under him, one blanket on top of him.

His head hurt. The vision in one eye was blurred, and dried blood was encrusted down the side of his cheek like a black crab clinging to his face. He stood up and the room hurtled around him, but he made it to the door. He hammered a fist against it.

“Arkin, you fucking bastard, open this door.”

He hammered for an hour. Two hours? He had no idea but his fist grew sore and the skin of his knuckles cracked. They’d taken his shoes and his belt, so he had nothing else to use for hammering. Slowly he slid to the floor, his back against the cold metal, and at last let his mind begin to think.

ONLY ONCE DID ARKIN ENTER THE PRISON CELL. AS THE days passed, Jens could hear other metal doors clanging, feet shuffling along the corridor, shouts from the guards, and sometimes soft whimpers from prisoners that caused Jens to call out. If there were screams, they were always cut short.

Jens lived alone day after day in a twilit world. He never saw anyone. Food and water were pushed twice a day through the hatch in the door, watery kasha in the morning, broth in the evening. A scrap of gristle or cabbage in it became a source of celebration. Every morning his bucket was emptied, removed through the same hatch, and he washed using a tiny part of his water ration tipped into the enameled bowl. It became precious, the water. He dipped his fingertips in it and thought of all the times in his life he’d wasted water with such careless abandon. Now he was like the slum dwellers who huddled around a leaky pump in the courtyard, cherishing every drop.

Each day he expected guards to enter his cell, men with iron bars and heavy fists. But none came. No one. So when Viktor Arkin walked into his cell after four weeks of only his own thoughts and his own smell, he was tempted to smile at him. Instead he sat in silence on his mattress, back against the wall, and watched him carefully. Behind Arkin stood three guards in uniform, bars and restraining chains in their hands.

“Jens Friis.” Arkin spoke his name as if it tasted sour in his mouth. “There’s something I want you to know.”

Jens rose to his feet. He was taller than Arkin and forced him to look up. “The only thing I want to know from you is when I’m getting out of this rat hole.”