from the emperor. His aunt had tried to persuade him to move from the island to a larger apartment — ‘You can afford it. Everyone wants to claim you as their physician.’ And yes, he had found himself in the enviable position of having to turn patients away. But he refused to consider a change of address. If anything, he spent more evenings at home, and he had invested a little money in pictures and some furniture to stamp something of himself on the apartment. There were still society engagements on the embankment and at the embassy, evenings with Dobson and at the houses of rich patients, but more often than not he preferred his own company.
It was late one evening and he was sitting in his shirt sleeves before the fire with a book as usual when there was a knock at the door. The dvornik always thumped with the fleshy part of his fist and this was a lighter hand. To be sure, he picked up the small revolver his uncle had given him after the attack and held it to his side.
‘Who is it?’
‘An old friend from Zurich,’ came the muffled reply.
‘Come in then, old friend.’ He opened the door and kissed Vera Figner warmly on both cheeks.
‘Who else were you expecting?’ she asked, pointedly looking down at the gun.
‘I thought you would know.’
Vera frowned and reached out to rest her small hand lightly on his sleeve: ‘What are you talking about, Frederick?’
They were still standing in his hall, Vera in her hat and dark grey cloak. ‘I’m sorry. Come and sit beside the fire,’ he said, and he led her into the drawing room and helped her from her things.
‘Did Sergei the dvornik see you? It’s not safe for you here.’
But Vera had been watching the house for some time and had waited until Sergei had stumbled off in the direction of the tavern on Bolshoy Prospekt.
‘You look thinner, Frederick,’ she said, examining him with a clinical eye. ‘How long has it been? More than a year, and so much has happened in that time.’
So she knew nothing of the attempt on his life. He was relieved. ‘What has happened, Vera? We are still waiting for your revolution.’
She gave him a disdainful pitying look of the kind that only one full of perfect certainty is capable of giving. ‘I don’t want to argue with you, Frederick,’ she said, ‘especially when you’ve been so kind. Was it difficult to get tickets for the trial? I knew you would manage it.’
‘A little. Your note was a surprise after such a long time,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘I want you to tell me what you saw, what you heard: Evgenia — how is she?’ Vera’s tone was clipped and matter-of-fact, as if the fate of her sister was no more important than the day’s grocery order.
Hadfield studied her for a moment then rose without speaking and stepped over to the drinks tray. ‘Can I pour you something?’
She nodded.
He poured a little brandy into two glasses, placed one on the table at her side and returned to his chair with his own.
‘Well?’ she asked impatiently.
‘Evgenia looked a little grey but defiant, of course.’
‘And the others?’
For half an hour he answered her questions, describing the proceedings and the evidence in the smallest detail. And he told her of Alexander Kviatkovsky’s passionate words denouncing tsarist tyranny and his determined justification of terror as the only course open to the people. As he spoke her expression began to soften, a small affectionate smile, a twinkle of pride, and soon all the questions were of Kviatkovsky. And when he had told her all he could, she sat back in her chair with a heartfelt sigh.
‘He means a lot to you?’
‘Yes.’
They sat in silence for a while, Vera avoiding his gaze, turning her glass on the arm of the chair. She looked lovely in the firelight, calm, even a little severe, and his heart went out to her because he could sense her quiet pain.
‘Is Anna safe?’ He had to ask the question.
She looked up in surprise. ‘Anna Kovalenko?’
‘Didn’t you know we were close?’
‘No. I didn’t. How peculiar.’
‘How so, peculiar?’
She hesitated, searching carefully for her words. ‘You’re very different. Anna is so committed to our cause — and you’re from such different families…’
He smiled sardonically. ‘The provincial aristocrat speaks, and I thought you were of the people now.’
Vera flushed angrily. ‘She is a good comrade. You’re very different, that’s all I was trying to say.’
‘And you have no idea if she knew of the attempt to murder me?’
Vera frowned and leant forward, her small hands clasped tightly together. ‘You should explain now, Frederick. Who tried to kill you?’
‘The People’s Will.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said with a cross shake of her head. ‘This is some sort of delusion.’
‘Oh, Vera,’ said Hadfield with a mirthless laugh. ‘I’ve suffered from delusions, but sadly this is not one of them.’ And he explained to her what had happened. ‘The student was taken. He told his interrogator I was to be executed as an informer.’
Vera listened with a pensive frown, perched at the edge of her chair, her gaze bent to the floor. Suddenly, snatching at her skirt, she rose abruptly from the chair. ‘I must go. Where’s my coat?’
He stared at her, confused by the cold determination in her face, then he stood up slowly and took a step towards her.
‘I shouldn’t have come here.’ Her face and neck were pink, her shoulders twitching a little with barely repressed anger: ‘The party will have had its reasons.’
‘No, Vera. Weren’t you listening?’ He was struggling to control his temper. ‘Your comrades tried to murder me.’
‘There is always a reason,’ she said. ‘You were an enemy of the people and that is enough.’
‘Weren’t you listening to me? Where is the woman who used to make up her own mind?’ He was trembling with fury now.
‘If you don’t give me my coat, I’ll leave without it,’ she said with icy resolution. He stared at her for a few seconds — she would not look him in the eye — then he said, ‘I must check the stairs and the street first.’
They did not speak again until he had shown her safely from the house. But at the bottom of the street, close to where he had been set upon, she turned to him with a softer expression and, after a little hesitation, she said: ‘I don’t think she would have known, Frederick. Really, I don’t think Anna would have known.’
35
They were the wrong couple to run the cheese shop. Bogdanovich looked the part all right, with his broad face and spade-shaped beard, the colour of a burnished samovar, but he knew nothing of commerce. The executive committee had chosen Yakimova for the role of shopkeeper’s wife because of her ‘democratic’ manner. She had the face of a badly nourished factory girl and an accent that marked her as someone from the Vyatka province. But ‘Bashka’ — as she was known to all — knew even less about running a business.
It had been open a week when Anna Kovalenko visited it for the first time, and they had already begun work on the tunnel. The Malaya Sadovaya was a busy little thoroughfare with civil servants passing to the justice building at the end of the street, shoppers and crowded taverns. The men working on the tunnel began long after closing and they left before dawn to avoid arousing the suspicion of the neighbouring tradespeople. But Anna went during business hours, her basket of tools covered by a neat little cloth. The shop was empty but for Bashka, who was
