When the Revolution began, the giant Derevenko had turned upon Alexei, ordering the boy to run errands, just as the boy had once commanded him to do. But Nagorny had stood by the Romanovs, accompanying them in their exile to Siberia. He was shot, Stefanov had heard, for trying to prevent the Bolshevik guards from taking a gold chain that belonged to the Tsarevich.
The Tsarevich, on his knees in the middle of his toy army, looked up as Stefanov and his father moved past, leaving in their wake a trail of rotten apple juice which leaked through the wooden boards of the wheelbarrow.
Finding himself in the presence of the Tsarevich, Stefanov’s father removed his cap and bowed, then snatched the cap from his son’s head as well.
The Tsarevich blinked at them and did not speak. There was no sign of anger or impatience. He simply waited for them to pass by, as a person might wait for the passing of a cloud which had obscured the sun.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Stefanov’s father turned to him. ‘What were you thinking, boy?’ he snapped. ‘You know you should remove your cap in the presence of a Romanov!’
The answer to his father’s question, which Stefanov was wise enough not to say out loud, was that he had not been thinking about anything except the sight of that army of toy soldiers. He would have given anything for the chance to join that game, to set up his own army in that yellow dust.
Setting off again with their burden of rotten apples, they eventually reached the compost pile, which was hidden from view by tall hedges made of dense holly and barred by a wooden gate, held fast by a length of rusty chain.
Stefanov’s father would come to this heap of rotting vegetation whenever he wanted to be alone, because the reek of the compost guaranteed his solitude. He called it his thinking place, although what the old man thought about, if anything, remained a mystery to his son.
The compost pile was a black mound of leaves, potato peels, turnip tops, to which Stefanov now added his wheelbarrow full of apples. Although the smell was strong, it was not entirely unpleasant, since the compost contained only vegetation and no bones or scraps of meat. The father never seemed to notice it, but that odour filled the young Stefanov’s senses in a way he found quite overwhelming. It was heavy, sharp and seemed to spark along the branches of his nerves as if it was somehow alive.
Stefanov’s father sat down upon an empty barrel which had once held a shipment of slivovitz, the plum brandy so favoured by the Tsar that he had bought an orchard in the Balkans specifically for the purpose of keeping him supplied. ‘You can rest for a minute,’ he murmured to his son.
‘Did you see?’ asked Stefanov. ‘One of those soldiers was painted to look just like the Tsarevich himself!’
Stefanov’s father grunted, unimpressed, as he was unimpressed by most things which served no practical purpose. ‘Last year,’ he said, ‘the Tsarevich was given the opportunity to command a group of real soldiers. And do you know what he did? He marched them into the sea.’
‘And did they do what they were told?’
‘Of course! It was their duty to obey.’
Stefanov pressed his hands together, feeling the burn in his palms from holding the wheelbarrow handles. ‘I would like to march some men into the sea. They must have looked silly, standing out there in the waves.’
The father leaned across and cuffed him on the back of his head. ‘There is nothing to be proud of in ridiculing men who have sworn to give up their lives in order to protect you!’
Stefanov’s father always seemed to be losing his temper, and the young Stefanov never knew when the moment would come. He lived in constant fear of crossing the invisible limits of his father’s patience. ‘But the Tsarevich is only a boy,’ he remarked hesitantly.
‘That is like saying that the Tsar is only a man!’ barked the father.
Their conversation was interrupted by a quiet rustle on the gravel path which ran beside the hedge.
The father’s head snapped up. ‘It’s him,’ he whispered.
Stefanov’s heart slammed into his chest. ‘Who?’ he whispered back.
Rising from his barrel seat, his father peered through the hedge.
‘Who is it?’ Stefanov asked again, still afraid to raise his voice above a whisper.
The father beckoned to him, teeth bared with urgency.
It was hard for Stefanov to see anything through the screen of holly leaves, whose needly points jabbed at his forehead as he attempted to follow his father’s gaze.
A dark shape moved past on the other side of the hedge.
Stefanov held his breath. An inexplicable sensation of dread washed through his mind.
When the strange figure had gone, the father turned to his son. ‘That was him,’ he whispered. ‘That was the Emerald Eye.’
Stefanov had heard of Inspector Pekkala. Everyone on the estate knew of his existence, although few had ever seen him in the flesh. Many times, in the company of his father, he had walked past the little cottage where the Emerald Eye was said to live. Both had searched for any sign of the famous investigator, but no one ever seemed to come or go from that lonely little building. There were rumours among his friends at school that the Emerald Eye did not really exist, but was, in fact, just a figment of the Tsar’s imagination. Lately, Stefanov had begun to wonder if those rumours might be true.
Overcome with curiosity, Stefanov stepped over to the gate which separated the compost yard from the path which lay beyond it. With his feet on the lowest rung of the gate, he leaned out beyond the hedge, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Inspector.
What he saw was a tall figure in a dark coat, gloved hands clasped behind his back. The man walked with an unusually straight back and each of his steps seemed deliberate, like that of someone who was counting out his paces.
A moment later, Stefanov’s father appeared beside him. ‘See the way he moves? Like a phantom. He’s not even human, you know.’
‘Then what is he?’ demanded Stefanov.
‘A demon or an angel. Who can say except the Tsar who summoned him?’
Even at that age, Stefanov knew that he and his father did not live in the same world. They might breathe the same air, and clean the same dirt off their shoes at the end of every day, but for Stefanov’s father, nothing was as it appeared. Each gust of wind, or rumble of thunder in the distance, or the body of a dead bird lying on the path, to be removed before the Tsar or any of his family could glimpse its crumpled form, represented a sign of what was to come. The Tsarskoye Selo estate, whose earth and stones and trees the man had tended for so long that he knew the grounds better than their owners ever could have done, was only a shadow to Stefanov’s father. Only the portents it contained were real, and deciphering them was his father’s only defence against the terrible randomness of life and death which he witnessed in the world around him.
The young Stefanov had already learned to see with different eyes. For him, sometimes thunder was just thunder, the wind only the wind, and the body of a bird no more than the trophy of a cat.
‘Summoned him from where?’ demanded Stefanov, in a tone that almost taunted the old man, knowing full well that such a challenge might cause his father’s patience to snap yet again, and that he would then be hauled from the fence and dragged behind the compost heap for punishment. But Stefanov was past caring about the half-hearted drubbings his father administered, slapping the young boy as if trying to beat the dust out of a carpet.
‘I’ll tell you where he came from.’ The father raised his hand‚ jabbing a dirt-rimmed fingernail towards the Catherine Palace. ‘From there. From that room!’