settled. He was fidgeting restlessly with a pen, a high colour in his cheeks. ‘Is that why you became a nihilist?’
She stared at him unmoved.
The count was needled by her refusal to reply. ‘We have a witness that places you on the embankment — he spoke to you only minutes before His Majesty was murdered. It will hang you.’
Again Anna refused to be drawn.
‘Your only hope of escaping the gallows is if you help us,’ he barked, his elbows on the desk, hands clasped together in a large fist.
Anna noticed the suggestion of a frown on Dobrshinsky’s face as if he disapproved of the count’s bullying manner. Frederick had spoken of the special investigator with grudging admiration, describing him as a ‘subtle Pole’.
But it was General Sereda who spoke next. ‘You seem so small. So unassuming.’ He was quiet and considerate in his address, like an avuncular old priest.
‘Were you expecting someone with two heads?’ she asked with a wry smile.
‘Precious little brain for one,’ said von Plehve, breaking in belligerently, ‘but a great deal of unruly passion.’
The general ignored him. ‘What did you hope to achieve? Do you know the tsar signed a draft law to introduce reforms only hours before he died?’
‘There is nothing I want to say before my trial,’ Anna said, determined not to be drawn into a political discussion.
‘Why didn’t you have children, Madame Romanko?’
‘My name is Anna Kovalenko.’
‘If you had had children this would never have happened to you,’ the general said with a little shake of the head.
Anna could not help smiling at this strange observation. She sensed that, although the general was hopelessly misguided and old-fashioned, he meant well.
‘Enough of this nonsense!’ von Plehve blustered. ‘Madame Romanko, you will go on trial alongside your comrades in the next few days. The outcome is a foregone conclusion unless you help us.’
Anna frowned but said nothing. What was the point?
‘And what of your lover?’ he continued, a mean little smile in his eyes. ‘Your English doctor. Do you think of him? What a strange hold you have on his imagination. You can help him.’
She flushed a little but did not reply.
‘It might be possible for him to go free.’
After a pause, she said: ‘Frederick Hadfield has done nothing. He knows nothing.’
But the count was not satisfied and fired questions and threats at her for another ten minutes, working himself into a mighty rage. Finally, he gave up, issuing orders to the guard to take her back to her cell. She assumed that would be the last she would see of her interrogators until the morning. But two hours later she was woken from a light sleep and escorted back to the office to face the special investigator alone. He offered her something to eat and she accepted some tea.
‘But you should eat to keep up your strength,’ he said gently. ‘Prison food is very insubstantial.’
But she was only interested in the tea. Dobrshinsky summoned a clerk from his outer office and gave him instructions, and a few minutes later he returned with a pot and glasses and also a little vodka.
‘I hope you’ll forgive the chief prosecutor’s intemperate display, Anna Petrovna,’ said Dobrshinsky, pouring her a glass and pushing it across his desk towards her. ‘He does not understand that you and your comrades love Russia and her people as much as we do.’
So reasonable, so plausible, Anna thought; he is as wily as a fox.
‘Ah, you smile,’ he said. ‘But I know your political programme as well as you, and there is much that you ask for that I would support — an elected assembly, freedom of speech and press — I share these aspirations too.’ He leant across his desk, his small dark eyes not flickering from her face.
‘The tsar is dead but where is your revolution? That is not the will of the people at all. They want change, yes, but not violence. Grigory Goldenberg understood this,’ he added, ‘that is why he was prepared to help me.’
‘Poor Grigory was tricked by smooth words and he knew it, and that’s why he took his own life,’ she said curtly. ‘I won’t make the same mistake.’
‘It’s over. The People’s Will is finished. It died on the embankment with the tsar. Who of importance is left? Only Vera Figner.’ He paused, his eyes scrutinising her face for any sign of weakness or emotion. ‘And I am sorry to say Count von Plehve is right — your closest comrades will be executed — even Sophia Perovskaya.’ He noticed her body tense.
‘You thought she’d escape because she’s a woman and an aristocrat?’ Again he paused, staring at her intently for a few seconds more. Then he said: ‘But you will not be executed. You will be saved by your baby. Yes, of course I know. Your unborn child is deemed by the law an innocent. But I know, too, what happens in such cases. Your baby will be taken from you when it’s born and placed in an orphanage. It will grow up knowing nothing of its mother and father. A Class 14 clerk will give your baby a name and an institution will be responsible for its wellbeing. Have you visited a city orphanage? Can you imagine your child in such a place?’
Anna felt a sharp, breathless pain as if his white hands were squeezing her heart. She had presumed her baby would have followed her into exile.
‘I think it’s barbaric,’ he added, ‘but what I think counts for nothing. I want you to understand the choice you must make is not just for yourself but for your unborn child. What life can your child look forward to in an orphanage?’
She did not answer, her face rigid and white.
‘It is a painful choice. Whatever happens, you will go to prison for life. It is possible, if you help me, that I may be able to arrange for your child to be given to your family, or even Dr Hadfield’s. Then it would know of its mother and father and know love…’
It was as if he was talking to her from a great distance, the subtle sibilant hiss of the snake in the garden. What was she prepared to risk for her child? How could they threaten to separate a child from its mother? She wanted to release the pain, to scream, to throw her tea glass against the wall.
‘…you must have time to think…’ He was still speaking to her. ‘It is a choice you make for your child. What is most important to you?’
44
For many days Hadfield saw only the warders and a doctor who stubbornly refused to say more than he deemed professionally necessary. The beating had left him with superficial injuries, but fearful the bruises would precipitate a scandal, the governor of the Preliminary had placed him under close medical supervision.
For half an hour each day, he shuffled in silence round the edge of the frozen exercise yard with the other inmates. He listened to messages painstakingly tapped on the pipes and memorised the names of ‘politicals’ from every corner of the empire and the distinctive chinking rhythm of their spoons. It was from one of these he learnt of Sophia Perovskaya’s arrest.
‘Is there word of Anna Kovalenko?’ he tapped slowly on his own pipe. No one had news of her. But after that he asked the question every day.
It was the powerlessness he found most oppressive. His fate in the hands of others, and even the smallest details of his life determined without reference to him. Finally, in his third week of captivity, he received a visitor.
His Excellency General Glen was standing by the mantelpiece in the governor’s office, resplendent in the Finance Ministry uniform, the gold and silver stars on his coat twinkling in the light of a lively fire. The governor was at his side but withdrew with a respectful nod of the head.
