Anne was not privy to the interview which took place between the Count and the Dowager. The Dowager did not leave for Moscow for another month, but during that time, she kept herself distant from the Countess, and persecuted her only by treating her to a cold politeness whenever they met. After she had departed, the Countess revived a little, but like a flower left too long out of water, she did not regain her spring. The Dowager seemed a continuing presence, and even from the remoteness of Moscow managed to continue the campaign by writing weekly letters describing the excellent qualities of Yelena Vassilovna’s son and doubting that anyone else’s child could begin to match him, wondering if Irina Pavlovna’s delicate health had improved at all, and uttering vague threats about the future disposition of her personal fortune. Anne, urged on by Nyanka, would have kept these letters from the Countess, even going so far as to beg her not to open them, but they seemed to exercise a black fascination over her. The Countess read them because not knowing what they said was worse than the reality.
The baby was finally born at Schwartzenturm in August, a perfectly formed, if rather small, baby boy; but the labour went hard with Irina, and she was unwell for a long time afterwards. Even when she did rise from her bed, she did not regain her former strength and spirits, but remained listless, depressed, and more silent than ever. She seemed unable to take any interest in the child, whom they named Alexander; and as soon as he was done with his wet-nurse, he seemed to turn quite naturally to Anne for mothering.
From his small beginnings, Sashka had thrived and grown, filling Anne with a different kind of love from anything she had ever known before. It was the first time she had ever known a human creature from birth, and as Irina turned away from the boy, Anne began to feel almost as if Sashka were her own son. Everything to do with him gave her great joy: to feed and bathe him, rock him and play with him, even to stand by his crib and watch him sleep. She was fascinated by his growing intelligence, and at times she felt she could almost see the unmarked, malleable clay of his infant mind taking shape as each new experience was impressed upon it. From the first moment he reached out a hand and encountered the bars of his crib, he was discovering where his own self ended and the rest of the universe began. It was a process Anne loved to watch, and with only a light hand she guided his exploration of the world, and his learning, day by day, the nature of things and how to respond to them.
It was for Anne that Sashka first smiled; it was she who placed objects in his fat little hands to examine and, inevitably, suck; towards her he made his first crawling movements, and with her aid first stood upright and took a bow-legged, wavering step. When he spoke his first word, it was Annan, uttered with a beaming smile and outflung arms towards his adoptive mother.
Now, as she walked along the quay watching Lolya and Nasha race ahead and snowball each other, Sashka was stumping along manfully beside her, and his hand locked fast in hers seemed as natural a concomitant to walking as her own legs. He was the more absolutely hers because his father had been absent from home, with only two brief visits, since he was a year old. The Count barely knew his son; Irina had no interest in him; Vera Borisovna refused to acknowledge he existed. Sashka was hers; and while with her conscious mind she might tell herself that as governess to the Kirov household it was her business to raise Alexander, there was a dark, atavistic place inside her that loved the child with a fierce, maternal passion. Sashka was the child of the Count that she should have borne.
Tanya, who was walking beside her pushing the baby-sledge, a sort of baby-carriage on runners, for when Sashka’s legs grew tired, said, ‘There’s a gentleman over there waving, mademoiselle. I think it might be Count Tchaikovsky.’
Anne turned her head. ‘Yes, you are right. We’ll wait for him. Call the children back, Tanya.’
The figure in fur hat and long sable coat would not have been recognisable at that distance as Basil Tchaikovsky, except for the white boots he affected, which he claimed were made from polar bear fur, and his gold-headed ebony walking-stick. Anne waited for him to close on her with a degree of pleasure she would not have imagined possible three years ago; but he had changed in the time she had known him, becoming a great deal more sensible and a little less conceited. The Count had been struck by it the last time he had been home and had teased Anne on the effect she had had on her lover.
‘He is trying to win your approval, Anna, that’s what it is. You will make a man of him yet.’
Anne had denied it hotly, protesting that she was not so vain and foolish as to suppose that she could have wrought any change in him; yet it was hard not to conclude that his idle plan of making her popular had resulted in his coming genuinely to admire her. She could not say he precisely courted her; but he sought her company, and was at pains to please her; and this winter, for the first time in his life, he had come to Petersburg without his sister.
It was he who had brought the first news of the battle at Preuss-Eylau to the Kirov household, and since then had oscillated between the Court and the Angliskaya Naberezhna, using his influence at the former to beg intelligence for the latter. His attentions had been kind, and though he was still very much a man of fashion, he seemed to Anne much less of a coxcomb, and she liked him the better for it.
He reached her now, his breath smoking with his haste, the tip of his thin nose crimson with the cold, and held out hands encased in huge sable gauntlets, like a bear’s paws.
‘Anna Petrovna! I’m glad I spotted you walking along. I was just on my way to call on you at the Palace.’ His bulging eyes were alight with some excitement, and he closed both paws over the hand she offered.
‘Is it news?’ she asked, suddenly breathless.
‘Yes,’ he said, looking down at her with some unfathomable emotion. ‘It is news of Kirov. He is found. He is alive.’
Anne’s apprehensions seized on the words. ‘Alive! What do you mean? Is he hurt?’
Before Tchaikovsky could answer, the children came running up.
‘Basil Andreyevitch!’ Lolya called. ‘Why are you walking? Where’s your troika? Are your greys lame? Are you going to walk with us? If you come with us, we could go as far as the winter garden, and see the aviary.’
‘Basil Andreyevitch does not want to see the aviary, you foolish child,’ Anne said with a nervous smile. ‘We are going to turn back now, so that he can pay his respects to your mama.’ Lolya pouted. ‘Oh, pooh! I don’t want to turn back – we’ve only been out a minute. Anna, do let’s go on! There’s a new scarlet parrot at the aviary and you can see Basil Andreyevitch any time.’
But Nasha, watching Anne’s face carefully, tugged briefly at her sleeve and mouthed the word ‘Papa?’ Anne nodded, tears jumping to her eyes. Lolya had not noticed this exchange, and Basil, trying to be helpful, solemnly offered her his arm, and said, ‘I think it is going to snow again very soon. Your walk had better be postponed until a finer day. Won’t you do me the honour of allowing me to escort you, Yelena Nikolayevna?’
Lolya hesitated, torn between the pleasure of such grown-up attentions and her disapproval of this particular gentleman. ‘Well,’ she said, placing her hand doubtfully on his arm, ‘I suppose I might. But I still think it’s very poor-spirited of you not to go and fight the French. If I were a man, I’d have gone.’
‘I’m sure you would – and heaven help the French if you had! But someone had to stay, you know, to look after you ladies,’ Basil said gravely.
‘We’d have looked after ourselves,’ Lolya said stoutly. ‘I don’t see that that was very important.’