‘What will you do?’ Basil asked again.
‘I don’t know,’ she said again. ‘For the moment, I’ll stay here. I must think carefully what will be best for Rose. I don’t want to act hastily.’
‘Then–’
‘I’ll keep your secret, Basil Andreyevitch. Provided you are discreet – provided no one else ever finds out – I’ll keep your secret, for Rose’s sake.’
‘Thank you,’ he muttered awkwardly.
She straightened up, and looked at him coldly. ‘In return, I don’t expect you ever – ever – to get in my way, or question anything I do. You forfeit all right to know anything about me, where I am, what I’m doing. Is that clear?’
He sneered. ‘Oh yes, perfectly clear. It means you can now continue with your affair with Kirov without having to sneak off into the country. So convenient! And no guilty conscience to spoil it, either!’
‘My conscience is my own concern,’ she said, turning away wearily. ‘I leave you to the mercy of yours.’ At the door she turned. ‘Don’t forget – discretion. I never want to notice you or your friend again.’
‘My lover!’ he retorted, jumping to his feet. ‘You had a lover, too, don’t forget!’
Anne thought for a moment resentfully of the agonies of guilt she had suffered. ‘At least my lover was a real man,’ she said coldly, and left him.
State Secretary Speransky’s downfall was finally brought about by his enemies at the end of March, and his regime of reform, which threatened to raise people to positions in the government which they were competent to fill, regardless of their birth or rank, was ended with great relief on all sides. The Emperor, obliged to dismiss him, nevertheless loved him enough to save his life, by sending him and his family under armed guard to Nizhny Novgorod, where he would be safe from the assassin’s hand which would doubtless reach out for him in St Petersburg.
April brought bad news and good – Austria, now tied by marriage to Napoleon, signed a formal treaty of alliance with France; but on the other hand, Sweden, lately a neutral power with good reason to be hostile to Russia, had signed a secret pact of alliance with the Tsar. April brought a change of command in the war against the Turks in the lower Danube: Admiral Chicagov was sent to replace the one-eyed, pleasure-loving veteran General Kutuzov, who, it was thought, had been living the life of a Pasha down there and achieving nothing. Chicagov had strict orders to get things moving and negotiate some form of peace with the Turks, in order to release the army there for service against the French.
April brought a formal letter of complaint from Napoleon to Alexander about his failure to keep to the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit: plainly, this was to be the official excuse for the invasion there was no doubt now was being prepared for. April brought the news that Napoleon, to release his own troops for the Russian venture, had offered to make peace in the Iberian Peninsular, provided his brother Joseph remained King of Spain – an offer the Spanish, Portuguese and British all indignantly rejected. Under the painstaking general Sir Arthur Wellesley – now Lord Wellington – the British troops and the indigenous guerrillas had been tying up huge numbers of French soldiers for years, and wearing them down bit by bit; and it was plain that it was only a matter of time before they were defeated and driven back over the Pyrenees.
April also brought – at last, and almost a month late, the thaw – ottepel! The late snowfalls provided a weight of frozen water over the land which threatened serious floods once it was loosened by the lengthening days: floods, fogs, and fathoms of mud; and at this unpropitious moment, the Emperor at last left St Petersburg.
Late in the evening on the 20th of April, Kirov came to call on Anne, who received him in her private sitting-room. Since the night of the ball, Anne had changed her conduct very little, except that she now met Nikolai openly, whenever she wanted to. She had not betrayed Basil’s secret to him, had merely told him that she and her husband had come to an arrangement; and if Kirov, seeing her evident shock and distress, and having observed Basil’s behaviour over a very long time, particularly recently with Jean-Luc, drew his own conclusions as to what had happened, he said nothing of it to her.
Her meetings with him so far since that day had been innocent. She was still too shocked to want to have any intimate contact with anyone; and she was too aware of their position in society, and Rose’s vulnerability, to dare to risk it. She knew, of course, that some decision would have to be taken as to what their relationship was to be in the future, but for the moment she wanted only to be able to be near him and to talk to him. She needed time for the mental wounds to heal.
Time, however, was a luxury in short supply in the spring of 1812. When Kirov came into her room that day, she saw at once that something had happened, and got to her feet in alarm.
‘Nikolai, what is it? Bad news? Is it–’ Though the word war was in everyone’s mind, everyone was curiously reluctant for it to be on their lips. Turbaned dowagers nodded their heads together over tea, dashing young officers laughed and boasted at the mess table, handsome young women whispered in Zubin’s across seven lengths of Indian muslin; but it was always The Situation they discussed, never that small and forbidding word. If it came, their sweet-faced, sweet-natured Emperor would be pitted against the cunning of the wicked Corsican bandit, who had already defeated him twice in campaign, and had conquered by his staggering military skills half the civilised world. There was no possibility, of course, that Russia could ever be overrun, but all the same, no one really wanted to think about what might happen. And no one wanted to mention That Word, in case voicing it gave it power.
‘Not yet,’ he said, understanding her, ‘but soon. The call has come, at any rate. I am to leave St Petersburg in the morning.’
She crossed the room to his arms, and he held her close, his thoughts running fast on other things. She felt his distraction, released herself, gestured him to a chair. Now that the light fell on his face, she could see how tired he was, how drawn. It was nine years since she had first met him – he was no longer a young man. We must not waste time, she thought.
But for now she said, ‘When did you eat?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t think I did. I’ve been at the palace all day.’
‘Then first I will get you supper. No, sit, rest. I shan’t be a moment.’
She went through into the next room and rang the bell, and when Mikhailo came, ordered a supper tray – bread and meat and whatever there was that was quick to prepare – and a bottle of good claret. When she returned to the inner room, she found that in her brief absence he had fallen asleep in the deep armchair before the fire with his chin sunk on his chest.
She didn’t wake him, but sat quietly in the chair opposite and watched him thoughtfully. This was the man whose existence, whose character and actions, had directed her life and coloured her thoughts for nine years – most of her adult life. But why? What made him so different? It was not simply a case of loving him – the words meant little, hackneyed as they were. It was that he – the wholeness of him, the unique entity of flesh and nerve and mind and muscle, intellect and passions, experiences and prejudices, that made up Nikolai Sergeyevitch Kirov – was somehow a part of her life and experience that could not be removed or replaced. If he were to go away and never see her again, she would not stop knowing him, or living through her experience of him. It was as if a hundred thousand invisible threads issued from his body and penetrated hers, along which some vital power rushed and sparked, carrying information beyond words, feelings beyond emotion.