To Kill a Tsar

arranging her cheeses on the counter.

‘And how is your husband, Madame Kobozev?’ Anna asked, placing the basket on the floor and sliding it beneath the counter with her foot.

‘Not as attentive as I would like,’ said Bashka, and she burst into an infectiously earthy laugh.

‘That’s because he’s a gentleman — far too good for you.’

‘And don’t you think women like us have something to teach a gentleman,’ said Bashka with a wink and a mischievous chuckle.

‘You mean about the rights of working women?’

Bashka chuckled again: ‘My rights are very important to me.’

‘And your business too, I hope?’

Bashka’s face crumpled in a troubled frown: ‘Not so good. Spirits are low. I’ve told them it must spur us on.’

The party was still reeling from the news that Kviatokovsky and Presnyakov would be hanged, and the rest had been sentenced to a lifetime of labour in the east.

Bashka bent low to pick up the basket: ‘Can you mind the shop? I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Is that wise?’ asked Anna. ‘I might run off with your cheese.’ She was only half in jest. It was not businesslike behaviour: ‘What if a customer comes into the shop?’

‘Shout. But no one will come in. The only visitors we get are the other merchants.’

She slipped through the door at the back to the cellar, where Bogdanovich was clearing earth from the new tunnel. Anna used the time to examine the shop front, checking the stock, lifting the lids of the barrels. Some of the cheese was hard and barely edible, and a merchant with so little stock would surely go out of business in weeks. If they did not run the place properly and turn in a profit, the other tradesmen would begin to talk.

‘Here we are, miss,’ Bashka said as she swung her broad hips through the door and up to the counter. ‘Some smelly Roquefort for you. It’s French.’ And she handed the basket to Anna.

‘And how much is your French cheese?’ Anna asked.

‘Whatever you want to give,’ she replied with a smile.

Anna shook her head with disapproval: ‘Is that what you say to all your customers? Not much of a capitalist, are you? Have you visited the other cheese merchants?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Bashka.

‘Well, you must.’ And Anna tried to explain why it was important to behave like proper bourgeois shopkeepers fretting over every kopek, but there was a distant look in Bashka’s eyes.

‘Vera Figner was here,’ she said at last, ‘pretending to sell me some Gorgonzola. She wanted to know about you and the Englishman.’

‘What business is it of Vera’s?’ Anna snapped, her blue eyes dancing like sun on hard-packed ice. ‘And what do you know of him anyway?’

Bashka hesitated, startled and a little frightened by the vehemence of her challenge: ‘There was talk. Your comrades were concerned… no one blames you.’

‘Blames me for what?’

‘How were you to know he was an informer?’ Bashka rocked defensively behind her counter.

‘Informer? Don’t be stupid, he’s—’ But Anna could not finish. A cold sickness gripped her. ‘What has he done to him?’

‘Are you all right? Look, sit here…’ Bashka lifted the counter, dragging a stool to the front of the shop.

‘What has he done?’ Anna repeated.

‘Who?’ Bashka was standing in front of her with the stool, pink with embarrassment.

‘Mikhailov. What has he done?’ Anna reached for her, digging her nails into Bashka’s shoulder. ‘What? Tell me.’

‘You’re hurting me.’

But Anna was possessed by fear and a determination to know the truth and she began to shake her, pushing her hard against the counter.

‘Please, Anna.’ Bashka sank trembling to her knees. ‘Please.’

Anna did not reply. Her shoes clicked sharply on the stone-flagged floor, and a moment later the doorbell tinkled and the shop filled with the bustle of the street.

Alexander Mikhailov was not in the best of humours. He had finished his piece on the execution after midnight and delivered it to the press at a respectable hour of the morning. The police screw was tightening and, but for the urgency, he would not have risked visiting the apartment on Podolskaya Street by day. And so it was galling to find that Anna was not at home. The rest of the printing family were busy with the new edition of The People’s Will but none of them could be trusted with what would be a most sensitive task. Anna would have been the ideal person to slip in and out of the photographer’s shop. He waited at the apartment for a while, drinking too many glasses of cheap black tea, while he considered what to do. All the photographers had been warned by the gendarmes to be on the watch for anything that might be of use for illegal propaganda. A police spy had followed him to the little shop on the Zagorodny and would know he had asked for copies of portraits of Kviatkovsky and Presnyakov. But someone had to pick up the photographs. Copies to Hartmann in Paris, copies to their friends in Berlin and London — a copy to Karl Marx — and copies to all the newspapers in St Petersburg; they needed the pictures by this evening.

The sky was a dingy winter grey, and lazy wet snowflakes that melted as they fell were sweeping along the street. Mikhailov turned up his collar in the doorway then set off at a brisk place. It was lunch time and most of the people he passed were hurrying home in the opposite direction, their heads bent into the wind. At the junction with Malodestskoselsky Prospekt, the stallholders were gathered round a crackling yellow fire with no thought to business. A scantily clad girl, her thin face thick with cheap make-up, stepped on to the street from a doorway and gave him a cold and hungry look. He walked on, avoiding her eye. He would take a cab from the Zagorodny to Madame Dubrovina’s comfortable home. Perhaps she could be of assistance. But as he was approaching the end of the street, he saw Anna’s neat figure hurrying towards him, the plain burgundy scarf he had given her when they were still friends pulled tightly about her face. She appeared distracted, and had almost rushed past him when he spoke her name.

She stopped, startled, then her expression hardened with contempt. ‘You. You — what have you done to him? Tell me.’ She spat it at him with a fury he had not known in her before.

‘What on earth…’ For once he was lost for words.

‘What have you done?’

‘Keep your voice down,’ he hissed at her. What was she doing berating him in the street? They would be arrested.

‘Don’t tell me to shut up. What did you do?’ She pulled her scarf away from her face. ‘Have you hurt him?’ There was a wildness in her eyes.

‘No.’

‘Liar! What have you done?’ She gave him a shove.

‘For God’s sake, Anna!’

Passers-by were looking at them. He would have to send her away again. She was a danger to the party. Reaching out for her arm, he said: ‘Anna, please. I don’t know what you’ve heard, but he’s alive. Now can we go somewhere else? This is not the place.’

‘Tell me, liar. Tell me now.’

‘He was an informer. The executive committee needed to deal with him.’ His voice was harsh, matter-of- fact.

‘You murdered him.’ She tried to slap his face but he caught her wrist and twisted her arm down and she let out a little gasp of pain.

‘He’s alive, didn’t I say so?’ he hissed at her. ‘Control yourself. Remember the party. Remember your duty.’

‘Let go of me, you bastard!’ She began to scream: ‘Help! Someone please help!’

He let her go: ‘Please. He’s alive… I did what I thought best for the party.’

This time she did manage to slap him with ringing force across the face. ‘You did what was best for