A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ memorizing it all. Maybe he had been thinking she’d wake up, or move, or say something. Maybe he’d been thinking that he could heal her somehow. He looked up to the opened windows on the top floor. There was still gramophone music playing up there, crazy, jangling ‘negro music’ that filled the street.

      ‘Ah…if we hurry, we can catch up with Blue Shirt…’ Hokhodiev said gently. Dudenko only shrugged.

      ‘Pyotr, she’s gone, and we have to go too,’ Hokhodiev said.

      ‘Yes,’ Ryzhkov said finally, backing away so that the attendants could free her from the pavement and roll her on to the stretcher.

      A crowd had formed now; neighbourhood residents who had heard the commotion and had rushed to their windows, then thrown on their robes and come out on to the street. As they headed back through the crush he saw officers from both the Preobrazhensky and the Grenadier Guards regiments, and what he supposed were uniforms of at least two foreign countries. There was even a pair of court pages there, boys not yet grown into men, who strode away nervously, heading towards the busy intersection of Sadovaya Street.

      ‘Excuse me, sir –’ A nervous gendarme rushed towards the gates where several women were being briskly escorted off the property. Ryzhkov saw the same angry one among them.

      ‘There you have it, Pyotr,’ Hokhodiev mused. ‘An entire flock of whores, judging by the feathers…’ Six or seven of them, pulling on their brightly coloured robes, being rushed out of the building before they had time to finish dressing, hair undone, clutching their bags.

      Ryzhkov saw that the angry one had fallen behind the others; she was spent now. No longer screaming about murder, just standing there alone. Hat jammed down over her head, clutching her bag across her breast, just staring down towards where the ambulance attendants were doing their work. He thought he could see her lips moving, talking to herself.

      ‘Are we ready, now? Have we done our careers enough damage now?’ Hokhodiev said, trying to make it all go away, trying to turn it into a joke.

      ‘Yes…why not?’ Ryzhkov said.

      ‘Good, while we all still have jobs, eh?’ Hokhodiev steered him out of the lane. Ahead of them Ryzhkov saw their cab drawn up at the corner by the teahouse.

      It was a scruffy place, there was no sign above the shop, just a long arc of painted flames that spanned the width of the establishment. Muta was sitting there pretending to be calm, taking a pull from his pipe. The ejected prostitutes had gathered at the door and were talking with some of the customers and angrily pointing back to the bindery.

      Hokhodiev pulled him across the cobblestones to avoid his being trampled as an expensive carriage glided by – inside Ryzhkov could hear the passengers laughing. Now that they had got away without arrest or embarrassment the whole event had become an exciting, giddy experience. Not something to tell their wives and children about, but nevertheless, a most unusual night. A thrill, even though somewhat frightening for a time, surely, but invigorating for all that, and even fun…

      ‘Hey!’ Dudenko suddenly cried out and rushed ahead to their cab. Two of the prostitutes were now angrily demanding a ride from Muta. Dudenko began waving them away but the girls simply parted and neatly circled him.

      ‘Thank you…thank you…ladies, I’m sorry we are full.’ Hokhodiev pushed the girls away, yanked Dudenko up on to the step.

      ‘This place looks like your home for the night, girls,’ Hokhodiev called out to them. The men at the door of the café laughed and one of the girls slung her bag at Hokhodiev as he got into the cab. Ryzhkov saw it was the angry one again, the same girl he had seen staring down the street. He watched as she pirouetted on the pavement in a complex negotiation between her friends and the laughing men in the doorway.

      He could see her closely. She was even more dishevelled now, certainly intoxicated, hysterical from the shock. Her tears had made dark rivers down her cheeks. Her nose was red, from crying. Attractive, if you went for women of that type. On the thin side. Yes, certainly, somewhat attractive. Even beautiful in a lewd, trashy way.

      Then suddenly there was the crack of Muta’s whip and she was gone.

       TWO

      Led by the splendid figure of Prince Nestor Vissarionovich Evdaev, two thousand horsemen proceeded along the embankment of the Yekaterininsky Canal, a route which took them past the Church of the Resurrection, a short way from the capital’s huge parade ground, the Field of Mars. It was a great plain, a huge rectangle with one end sliced off by the Moika and the Mikhailovsky Gardens, a corner defined by the Marble Palace, and one long flank bounded by the Summer Gardens.

      A breeze billowed down the canal, thick with the heat of an early summer and the many fragrances of soldiery. Prince Evdaev’s mount was Khalif; snow-white, his mane shorn and ribboned with satin – a perfect animal. For two weeks Zonta, his groom, had trained Khalif, fed him a secret diet devised by the old equerry. In preparation for today’s ceremonies Evdaev and his officers had returned to the gymnasium and he was hard now, his skin browned by the hot Russian sun, his legs strong, his moustaches waxed, freshly bathed and barbered that very dawn, his cheeks stung with a mint lotion. His valet had spent an hour polishing his helmet, his breeches were newly tailored for the occasion, his gloves chalked to perfection.

      Oh, and were the streets not glorious! No expense had been spared for today’s celebrations, only one of a year’s worth of events marking the 300th year of the Romanov dynasty. Oh, it was wrongheaded, of course. An extravagance. A veneration of incompetence. But nevertheless, Evdaev thought…glorious.

      Golden double-headed eagles, flags hanging from every lamp standard, decorations in every shop window. The evening before (only a few hours ago!) he had been here in the throng, giggling at the amazing fireworks overhead – a display especially designed by talented Spaniards, a gypsy family that specialized in the beautiful and the dangerous.

      They clattered along the cobbles that curved beneath the Church of the Resurrection. Evdaev looked up to the mosaics set into the bricks, the arms of the great royal families of Russia. Above he saw his own family’s arms – a burning flame suspended over a bloody stockade wall – the House of Evdaev. He bowed his head, made the sign of the cross, a small act of contrition as he rounded the site. The next time he raised his eyes he saw the ikons of the saints staring down at him and for just a moment he could see his own image there – his face transformed into a grinning skull, with eyes burning hellfire for eternity.

       Treason! I am committing treason!

      Was God watching him, protecting him? The church was new, only completed a few years earlier, and known as the Saviour on the Spilled Blood, because it had been built on the exact spot where Tsar Alexander II was killed. On that bloody day a terrorist had thrown a bomb as the Tsar arrived to visit his aunt. Alexander had escaped injury from the blast, and had even attempted to help wounded bystanders, truly a saintly act.

      But there was a second assassin lurking with a second bomb and Alexander had died in his palace, the bedroom preserved as it was when he’d succumbed; the bloodstained sheets, his last lists to himself. A water glass, reading glasses. Could Alexander’s ghost see into his traitor’s heart?

      There was still time, he thought.

      He could dismount, crawl up the steps to the church, confess and make his penance atop the bloodstained cobbles. СКАЧАТЬ