boy. ‘You see, I’m all right, thank God, but look, look at your handiwork…’
‘Do not thank God yet,’ the terrorist replied defiantly.
‘This is madness,’ Barclay muttered, and he touched the colonel’s arm: ‘For God’s sake speak to His Majesty, sir.’ Then he addressed the emperor himself.
‘Your Majesty, there is a sleigh close by. Please, Your Majesty, it isn’t safe.’
The tsar turned slowly to look at him, and Barclay was struck by the sadness and bewilderment in his eyes. ‘First, I want to go a little closer.’
A squadron of cavalry had turned on to the embankment from the manege and began to take up positions about the emperor. But mounted, the guards could play no part. Their horses were shifting restlessly at the edge of a large circle while the crowd of onlookers gathered on the pavement near the emperor with no one to hold them in check.
Barclay could barely contain his anger. But what could he do? There were senior officers there, it was their duty to reason with His Majesty.
‘I want to see the site of the explosion,’ the emperor insisted, and he began walking towards the small crater in the middle of the road. He had taken no more than a few steps when a young man at the canal fence swung round to face him and, lifting his arms above his head, hurled a bomb at his feet. A scorching rush of air and Barclay was knocked to the ground, his face stinging, blinded for a second and completely deaf. And there were others on the cobblestones beside him. Through the dense smoke he could see an officer with white epaulets — was it Dvorzhitsky? — rising unsteadily. His ears were ringing but after a few seconds the sound of someone screaming reached him as if from far away, then a plaintive cry for help. With a supreme effort he picked himself up and stumbled forward through the smoke. Dvorzhitsky was kneeling over the tsar. His back was against the granite base of the canal fence, he was bare-headed, his coat in tatters like a beggar’s, his face covered in blood. One of his eyes was closed, the other empty of expression. His legs had been shattered by the blast, the right one hanging by strips of flesh, and blood was pumping from his severed arteries. And as the smoke cleared Barclay could see a score of dead and wounded about him, some crawling, some standing, the snow stained with plumes of blood. Among the fragments of clothing, the hats and swords, were severed limbs and pieces of torn flesh. Close to the tsar, his face unrecognisable, lay the man responsible for the carnage. If not yet dead, he was very close to it.
‘I’m cold, Dvorzhitsky, cold,’ the emperor said, his voice weak and flat. The colonel was swaying over his sovereign, close to collapse and in no fit state to issue orders. And to Barclay’s dismay, a crowd of onlookers and guards was stepping through the wounded to gather about the tsar, their hats in their hands.
Couldn’t they see their emperor was dying? Struggling to control the grief and guilt welling inside him, Barclay shouted: ‘Get back! Get out of the way! You — a blanket for His Majesty. We’re going to carry him to the sleigh.’
But before they could lift him, the Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich appeared as if from nowhere, his guards forcing their way through the crowd. He fell to his knees and reached out gently with a white gloved hand to touch his brother’s face. And the tsar whispered something Barclay did not catch, but a moment later the order was given to lift him into a sleigh and drive with all speed for the palace.
‘The hospital — we must stop the bleeding!’ But no one was listening to Barclay. ‘Your Highness, the hospital…’
One of the Grand Duke’s officers pulled at his sleeve: ‘It’s the emperor’s wish.’
No one was going to question the word of the Autocrat of All the Russias.
Barclay watched in a daze as the sleigh sped along the embankment towards the Konyushenny Bridge and passed from his view. There were no more miracles. They had killed the tsar. And standing there in the street, surrounded by the wounded and the dead, tattered pieces of uniform, a broken sword, he shed silent helpless tears for his emperor and for Russia and for himself.
At half past three in the afternoon the double-headed eagle of the House of Romanov was lowered at the Winter Palace. As word spread through the city, people began to gather in the streets to listen to the rumours and to weep or pray. There was talk of a palace coup, a royalist plot, and of Russia’s foreign enemies, but most were sure the ‘nihilists’ were to blame.
‘Do you know what they’ve done to our tsar?’ an old lady asked Anna, wiping her eyes with her mittens. ‘They say he was helping the wounded from the first bomb when they killed him.’
‘He was the liberator,’ said a merchant in a fine fur-lined coat. ‘Why would they kill the tsar who gave the serfs their freedom?’
Anna hurried on, the carnage filling her mind, walking across streets without care, her eyes flitting from face to face, the noise of passing traffic a confused and distant hum like the last of an echo. In the Haymarket, people were standing about the square in small groups, bewildered, unsure what to say to each other but drawn together for comfort. And at the Church of the Annunciation the priests were leading the faithful in an oath of allegiance to the new tsar. On the Voznesensky, a detachment of cavalry cantered past her with their swords drawn as if preparing to go into battle, even though the battle had already been lost.
There was a rolled newspaper in the window of the apartment. It was still secure. But for how long? They had taken the first bomber, perhaps the second too. They had taken Mikhailov and Kletochnikov and Zhelyabov. Could the party survive the death of the tsar, Anna wondered, as she climbed heavy-footed to the apartment. What they hoped would be the first step might become their last. She was greeted at the door by smiling faces, comrades without doubts, who kissed her and embraced her and wanted her to celebrate with them. Vera was weeping tears of joy and so were some of the others; Praskovia from her printing family, Frolenko and Bashka from the cheese shop, and the young naval lieutenant, Sukhanov.
‘Annushka, you know? You saw? We’ve done it,’ said Vera, taking her coat.
And they led her through to the sitting room where Praskovia performed a little jig about the floor: ‘Dance with me. What is the matter? You’re tired. Sit down. Have you seen Sophia?’
Vera sat with her on the couch and spoke breathlessly to them all of the heavy burden that had lifted from their shoulders. ‘The tsar has atoned for the blood of our martyrs with his own blood. There will be a new Russia, a better future.’
‘And the rest of Europe — Vienna, Berlin — we have lit a torch for freedom everywhere,’ said Frolenko.
‘Can’t you sense the excitement of the people?’ said Praskovia, wiping tears from her face. ‘They cannot refuse us free elections now. And in time they must free our prisoners.’
Anna watched and listened to their talk of liberty and the future with a dull ache in her chest until she could stand no more of it and left the room. She curled up on the bed she had shared the night before with Sophia, hoping they would leave her alone. But, after a while, Vera came to find her: ‘Annushka, help us celebrate. We have some wine.’
‘No, Vera, please, I want to be alone.’
‘But you must, we’ve done this together.’
‘Yes. Together…’ Anna could not contain herself any longer. ‘But it’s the end, Vera!’ And she burst into tears.
‘The end of what?’
But Anna would not say.
Hadfield had heard the first screams in the middle of the afternoon. They were followed by a frenzy of tapping on the heating pipes. By the evening he knew: the tsar was dead and the warders were going to punish the ‘politicals’. Some prisoners shouted protests at the abuse of their comrades and banged on their cell doors with tin plates, but then they received a visit too. Hadfield lay on his bed trying to block the empty echo of the prison from his mind, the clatter of boots on the landing outside, the shouts, the screams, the grey soullessness of it all. Would they want to punish him too? He did not care. He had made his choice and kept what he knew hidden. He did not regret that choice, only that it had been necessary to make one. The tsar was not an evil man but as much a prisoner of family and circumstance as everyone else. He could picture him at the bedside of the Finnish soldier, his brown eyes full of pain and bewilderment. And others must have died with him too. What part had Anna played in
