To Kill a Tsar by Andrew Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

kopeks. At last the door opened again.
    ‘You’re coming with me,’ Constable Rostislov said, lifting his uniform coat from a peg.
    ‘But I have to be back. They’ll miss me.’
    The policeman laughed. He was clearly in great good humour.
    ‘Too bad. We’re going to Fontanka 16.’

5
    T he earnest faces and desperate talk left a dull grey impression on Frederick Hadfield’s mind for days and he resolved to be busy if another invitation was delivered to his door. He thought of Lydia Figner often and found himself consumed by feelings of guilt about the careless way he had ended their affair. As the days passed and he heard nothing more from her sisters, he began to wonder if they had just dismissed him as a hopeless case, beyond redemption, another fuzzy liberal without the vision or courage necessary for their great socialist project. For the most part, he was happy to be considered so, even if it was impossible to entirely ignore the truth of Vera’s parting shot: there is no freedom in Russia. With a stroke of his pen the tsar had made the army master of life and liberty in his empire. Men and women suspected of ‘subversive tendencies’ could be brought before a court martial and either imprisoned or banished without any recourse to an appeal.
    From time to time he would cross the Neva by the pontoon bridge at the eastern tip of Vasilievsky and stare across the water at the grim stone face of the St Peter and St Paul Fortress. The enemies the state simply wished to forget were held in the cellars of the Alexeevsky Ravelin until cold and hunger carried them away. Would the Figners die in this Russian Bastille? And he would imagine Vera shivering in the darkness, her white face still defiant, an unspoken ‘Didn’t I say so’ in the damp air between them.
    But Hadfield was too busy on the wards of the Nikolaevsky and with a growing list of private patients to brood for long onthe fate of the Figners or the country’s future. With the help of his aunt, he began to establish his reputation as a physician in embankment society, in particular with Anglo-Russian women of mature years, of whom there were a goodly number. So much nicer than those German doctors was the general view, and so well qualified. Some remembered his father with affection, and one old lady had ‘the honour’ to have been examined by his great-uncle, Sir James; ‘You are so like him, dear,’ she had said, with a tear of memory in her eye. And it had been suggested to him more than once that the emperor would one day favour the great-nephew of such a loyal servant of the House of Romanov with a royal appointment. Hadfield was grateful but a little embarrassed by the attention and looked forward to his afternoons at the Nikolaevsky with those who could not afford to pay for his services and would never dream of inviting him to dinner.
    On the last Sunday in April, the dvornik huffed and puffed up the stairs to his apartment with a note from the British embassy. It was from one of the consuls, an old friend of his father’s: the ambassador’s wife had taken to her bed with a fever and he would be grateful if Dr Hadfield could spare the time to attend upon her. A victoria was waiting at the door for an answer, the surly coachman tapping his whip impatiently against its iron frame.
    The embassy and its residence were at the seat of imperial power on the embankment before the Field of Mars where the emperor reviewed the royal regiments, within hailing distance of his palace. A fine eighteenth-century mansion, it had belonged to the first Alexander’s tutor and councillor, and the tsarconqueror had often danced in its famous White Ballroom. With less ceremony, Hadfield was shown up the bright marble staircase, through the embassy’s formal rooms and into the private quarters in the east wing.
    The Countess of Dufferin was suffering from no more thana severe head cold and an acute attack of anxiety. But Hadfield was charming and concerned and