He hung up, turned to Malory and held out the envelope. 'All yours, mate.'
'Thank you,' said Malory. 'Very much.'
CHAPTER TEN
-------------------------
Fifth instalment of the account, written by Lt-Cdr H. G. Dikeston RN, of his journeyings
in Russia in the spring and summer of 1918.
I mend quickly, or at any rate my body does. As my mother used to say, there is a good healing flesh in the family. But in 1918 in Ekaterinburg it seemed too slow. On the second day on which I woke I thought with a sharp pang of the precious paper I had brought from Tobolsk and became desperate as, too weak to move, I lay wondering what might have become of it. When the nun appeared again in the whitewashed chamber, and as she fed me more of some nourishing broth, I asked, 'Where are my clothes?' and heard the weak whisper of my voice. She smiled. 'Safe. And clean, moreover, which they were not when you arrived.'
I whispered. 'Sister, this is important -'
She interrupted me. 'First the broth. It is that which is important.' And she refused to listen until the bowl was empty. 'Now?'
'In my pocket,' I told her weakly, 'are papers which matter greatly to me. Tell me, please, if -'
She raised a hand. 'Save your strength. I will go and see.'
She was back two or three minutes later. She carried a paper bag and as she sat beside my bed, I saw she was frowning with some severity.
'Here are your things.'
'Paper,' I muttered. 'In a stiff white envelope. Is it -?'
She peered into the bag, then put her hand inside. 'This?' she asked, drawing it forth. It was no longer so white, nor so pristine. In my immersion, water had reached and stained it, but I would have known that envelope anywhere. I let out a sigh of relief. The sister now said, 'You are a wealthy man?'
'No!'
The frown remained on her face, despite the gentleness of her tone and manner. I whispered, 'Why do you ask?'
'Because there are jewels here, and trinkets. They must be valuable, and they must have been in your pockets when you were brought here.'
I had not remembered until that moment, but I remembered now, at once, my shameful behaviour on steamer Rus. Oh God, I thought, how can I explain?'
But one forgets that true goodness lies in simplicity. Even as I was about to tell her the matter was secret, she said, 'I am so afraid they may be mislaid.'
'Place the envelope beneath my pillow, please, Sister.'
So she did, and it was there when Bronard came again. I had strengthened a little in the course of the day and listened to him with interest. The essence of what he had to say was that little had changed in the long month of my illness. The Imperial Family was reunited, but imprisoned together in the Ipatiev House and impossible of access. On the Urals Soviet there were some, possibly a majority, in favour of a violent end to all the Romanovs, it's not enough just to have them off the Russian throne,' Bronard quoted Goloshchokin as saying. 'We must have them under the Russian ground!'
Bronard, with his catspaw Scriabin, was engaged with the opposite view. Scriabin was, it seemed, having the same difficulty experienced by so many in dealing with the Soviets since. For even then they were men who spoke with a lofty moral tone and sought only blood. Scriabin, arguing for the justice of a properly-conducted trial, a man making a genuinely moral stand, found his was a very lonely voice. Bronard, meanwhile, was weaseling. He was for blood, he told them. Nicholas must pay with his life; furthermore, the entire family shared his guilt and they too must pay. 'But not, I keep telling them,' he said, 'unless it can be presented as Socialist justice.' He grinned that loathsome grin of his. 'You should hear me, Comrade ! I yell for blood, and then I say that we must not besmirch the name of Socialism with murder, however justified. I say that Scriabin is right, but right for the wrong reasons. That what we must show is not mercy but determination and we must show it to the world! How can we contemplate, I ask them, emulating the despotic lawlessness of Imperial Russia?'
When he had gone I lay flexing my wasted muscles in an endeavour to exercise them, conscious all the time of the paper beneath the pillow, of the jewellery I had stolen which lay with it, and of the rightful owners, who slept no more than a mile or two away and over whom the shadow of doom now stretched. It was clear that, for whatever reason, the new leaders of the Russian nation had made no move in the last month to extend mercy to the Romanovs.
I said: 'My clothes, Sister, if you please.'
'Nonsense! You're far too weak.'
'I have the most urgent business. I insist - my clothes! And if you can get one, a taxi, or a cart even, to the station!'
'But you can't travel. Not in your -'
'I must!'
I browbeat her at last into aiding me - for dressing took more strength than I had imagined. My head was light and I had little sense of balance. When I stood upright I wavered and almost fell several times, but in the end I was walking slowly, leaning upon a stick the sister gave me, out to a cart which waited in the yard of the convent. The back was filled with clean straw, upon which I reclined in no little comfort and directed the driver to take me to the house of Preston, the British Consul, in Vosnesensky Avenue. On the way, I naturally had to pass the so-called House of Special Purpose where the Imperial Family was incarcerated, and the mere sight of it, allied to the thought of the humble circumstances to which a great monarch had been reduced, made me yet more determined upon my journey, foolish or no. Preston, in the miserable manner of British diplomats abroad, made endless fuss about the advance of funds. Though he knew who I was and my purpose in the city, when the matter was raised of handing cash to me, I might have been the direst criminal. At last, losing patience, I said, 'Your trade, Preston?'
He gave me a vinegary look, I am not in trade, sir!'
'Your work, then? Your qualification, if such you have?'
He was in Ekaterinburg for the mining, like everyone else. It was silver and copper and platinum that had brought Preston to the Urals, and on that basis, I handed him an item taken from the Rus: a single ruby close to half an inch across in a platinum setting. 'Hold that against two hundred pounds,' I said.
'Is it yours?'
'Damn your impudence,' I said, 'and damn your caution, too. There are more important things afoot than provenance and collateral. You want a signature?'
He did, of course. His kind always do. But fortunately his kind always have money about somewhere and at last he advanced me sovereigns, a hundred and fifty of them. The cart now took me to the station, and that place must not be omitted from any narrative concerning Ekaterinburg, for there was nothing there of equality, nothing of to-each-according-to-his-need. If you could pay you could feast, otherwise you starved. I went to the old first-class restaurant, expecting some cloth-capped commissar to deny me entry and preach me a sermon into the bargain; instead I found a head waiter in tails, a string trio and a menu two feet long. It was an extraordinary sight. Here were rough-looking men eating with their hats on, drinking spirits until they fell off their chairs. And shrieking women, too. I saw Beloboradov, even, the chairman of the Soviet, snapping his fingers for a waiter and shouting for champagne. It remained a luxury restaurant. Missing now was ton. I ate quietly, my back turned to the room. I needed but had no appetite for food and left as soon as I had finished to seek accommodation on the next westbound train, only to discover that, as in the restaurant, gold spoke authoritatively. No third-class this time: I had a room for two to myself and assurances of privacy!