Her deep, black eyes blazed as she saw me. “No one is allowed to disturb me after a performance. Get out.” I heard in her voice the Russian accent she’d suppressed while on stage. When I didn’t move, she demanded, “Who are you?”
I could still see a shade of Emily in her. “My name is Charlotte Bronte,” I stammered.
“What do you want?”
“I’m looking for someone,” I said. “A mutual friend, I believe.”
Katerina turned and regarded me with surprise, as if she thought the likes of me couldn’t possibly have any acquaintances in common with the likes of her. “Who is it?”
“His name is John Slade. But he may also call himself Josef Typinski.”
“I don’t know anyone by either of those names.” Katerina spoke indifferently, but I had seen what a talented actress she was. “What makes you think I know your friend?”
“He had a playbill with your picture on it in his room.”
“Those playbills are scattered all over London. Many men keep them because they admire me. It doesn’t mean I know them.”
“But you are from Russia,” I persisted. “John Slade went to Russia three years ago. Perhaps you met him there?”
Her eyes darkened at the mention of her native country. “I came to England ten years ago, to escape the persecution of the Jews,” she said coldly. “I sang on the streets for a living, until I was discovered by the director of the Royal Pavilion Theater. I have never been back to Russia. I have wiped its dirt off my feet. I don’t know John Slade. If you don’t leave this instant, I’ll have you thrown out.”
There seemed no point in staying. I apologized for bothering Katerina, then exited the theater by a back door. I trudged up an alley to the high street, where I found Mr. Thackeray and his friends.
“Ah, Miss Bronte,” he said. “I thought we’d lost you.”
Mrs. Brookfield supported the pale, quaking Mrs. Crowe. “If only we could get a carriage.”
That proved difficult. Carriages for hire were snapped up by other folk in the crowd. We waited for half an hour, my companions impatient and I depressed because my search for Slade was at a dead end. Then I heard someone shout, “Here comes Katerina the Great!”
Out of the alley emerged Katerina, with a man at her side. She wore a crimson, hooded cloak. She walked down a path lined by gawkers, as regally poised as if she were the Queen. But I hardly noticed her. The man captured all my attention.
It was Slade.
Dressed in an elegant black evening suit, brilliant white shirt, and black top hat, he appeared miraculously restored to sanity. His face was clean-shaven, his hair neatly trimmed and combed; his gray eyes were as clear as when I’d said goodbye to him three years ago. My breath came hard and fast and my heart clamored as I gazed upon my long-lost love. My emotions skyrocketed from misery to joy.
“John Slade!” I called.
He didn’t react. I hurried forward and stood before him and Katerina. They stopped. Both eyed me, she with annoyance, he with mild puzzlement.
“I beg your pardon, madam?” he said politely.
His accent was as Russian as Katerina’s. That didn’t surprise me; in order to spy in Russia, he would have had to learn the language. What surprised me was the lack of recognition he showed toward me.
“It’s Charlotte Bronte,” I said.
He flicked his gaze over my person. His eyes showed no recollection of me, or of the fact that three years ago he’d asked me to marry him. As I stood stunned, he said, “Madam, I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
He led Katerina to a carriage, helped her in, then sat beside her. As the carriage moved off, I caught a last glimpse of them through the window. Slade turned away from me, toward Katerina. He put his arm around her and kissed her passionately.
Then the carriage was gone, and I was left alone with my companions. Mr. Thackeray said, “What was that all about?”
8
The secret adventures of John Slade.
1849 March. Winter gradually released its frosty grip on Moscow. Snow fouled by ashes and manure gradually thawed. People filled the city streets, basking in the weak sunlight. They savored the warming air and dreamed of the long-awaited spring.
In the Presnya quarter, wagons laden with coal rattled past factories whose machinery clanged, pounded, and roared incessantly. Smoke and steam issued from a bathhouse near the workers’ barracks. John Slade entered, stripped off his clothes in the changing room, then lay on a marble table in a bath chamber. An attendant sprinkled him with boiling water, lathered him with soap, and scrubbed him down. Slade endured a vigorous massage, then a whipping with a broom made of twigs, to stimulate blood circulation. He rinsed himself in a pool of ice-cold water, then went to the steam room. He sat on a bench, one towel draped over his lap, another over his head and shoulders to protect him from hot clouds of steam, and he waited.
The three Russian intellectuals joined him, one at a time. These days they were careful not to be seen together in public. They met at different places where nobody knew them. When they were all seated, Peter the poet said, “Bad news, comrades. There was a raid on a meeting last night. Sasha, Ilya, and Boris were arrested.”
Fyodor the journalist cursed. Alexander the professor shook his head. Arrests were ever more frequent; the Third Section had intensified surveillance on the dissidents. Slade himself had had a policeman following him around since January, when he’d published an article in a magazine that advocated revolution. He had easily spotted his shadow, and he easily managed to shake it off when he wanted. The rest of the time he led the policeman around town, pretending not to know he was there, keeping him on the string for future use.
“I had a visit from the Third Section last week,” Fyodor said, pale despite the heat. “Three of them came to my rooms. They offered me a job writing propaganda for the Tsar. They said that if I refuse, I’ll be sent to Siberia.”
Banishment to that cold, remote wasteland was a common punishment for opposing the Tsar’s regime. Wagons full of exiles departed from Moscow daily.
“I have bad news, too,” Alexander said. “Today I lost my post at the university. The Third Section convinced the administration that I am a bad influence on my students.”
He removed his spectacles and wiped sweat, or tears, from his eyes. Peter said, “They’re eliminating us one after another! We have to do something!”
“We’ll call a special meeting,” Fyodor said. “We’ll talk about the problem.”
Peter jeered. “Talk has gotten us nowhere.”
“He’s right.” Slade hid his reluctance to speak behind the fiery passion for revolt that was part of his disguise. “It’s time to take action.”
Peter eagerly took the bait. “Yes! We must strike back!” He pounded his fist into his palm. “We must fight fire with fire!”
“But we swore that we would never resort to violence,” Fyodor said. “To do so would make us no better than our enemies.” But Slade could see that he was ready to be persuaded.
“They’ve given us no choice!” Peter persisted.
“This is war,” Slade said. “In war, no holds are barred.”
Even as Fyodor nodded, Alexander said, “How can we fight a war against the Tsar’s regime? It is too strong. We are so few, so weak, and so unorganized. Besides, we don’t have enough guns.”
Here it was, the opportunity for which Slade had been laying the groundwork ever since he’d met Peter, Fyodor, and Alexander. Here the Russians were, at the point toward which Slade had been covertly, carefully urging them. Triumph excited him at the same time he felt ashamed of how easy it had been. Manipulation was one of his best talents as a spy, one reason he’d drawn this assignment. But never had he been so loath to use it on trusting, unsuspecting subjects.