Heart of Iron (23 page)

“We are much more obvious on this train,” I pointed out. “Besides, this train is the fastest thing in the country — how can they catch up to us?”

Jack shrugged. “There are ways. What does the train need to stop for anyway?”

“Pick up more coal and tea and water and food,” I said. “I was bored this morning and stopped by the engine compartment — it is rather horrifying. All those half-naked freedmen, covered in coal dust, black as devils, shoveling coal into the maw of the furnace… scary to think one furnace is what’s driving the entire train, isn’t it?”

“Fire and steam,” Jack mumbled under his breath. “It is staggering to think how much the two of them reshape the face of the land.”

“I suppose.” I stared out of the window, impatient for the sight of the city or any human habitation, but so far nothing but a spruce forest and a bridge over Chusovaya River broke the monotony of snow and sky. “Quite a bit of reshaping going on lately. I still wonder if we should take our offer to the Taipings.”

“You have no connection to them. Wong Jun’s letter would be a liability to their eyes.”

I sighed and continued staring. It felt like we were doomed to variations of this argument until we arrived in China and took one course of action or another; until then, it felt rather futile.

We entered the outskirts of Yekaterinburg — wooden single-storied cottages, fenced in yards with an occasional barn, but mostly poor but neat houses. It reminded me of home so much — I imagined the insides of these cozy tiny houses, their floors covered with straw and a few chickens milling about in the kitchen, a single living room half-occupied by a brick whitewashed stove that gave warmth to people and livestock alike, and was also good for cooking and heating water. Simple but comfortable accommodations — most peasants and freedmen in Trubetskoye lived like that, and my heart was squeezed tightly by the cold, steely hand of nostalgia.

By the time the train pulled into the station, I felt misty-eyed and sentimental, missing my mother and Eugenia and even the freedmen and engineers so terribly. Only the thought of the tavern cheered me up a little.

We said temporary goodbyes to the Chinese gentlemen who expressed no desire to explore taverns, and stayed in their little compartment crowded by their trunks and playing cards, speaking in soft voices. I promised to see them again soon but took my satchel with me. It was conceivable we would miss the train and would have to wait for the next one.

The tavern our conductor had recommended was a small one, curiously empty — although I supposed few traveled so far east in winter. Indeed, the cold had been strong and biting, and in a few minutes that it took us to walk from the station to the tavern, my fingers had grown white and my pelisse (woefully inadequate as a protection against the cold) developed a thick coating of frost that hid the gold braiding entirely from view. Jack seemed as uncomfortable — he kept blowing on his fingers, his breath thick and milky in the clear air, and tossing his satchel from one hand to the other.

“Maybe we should take separate rooms,” I said.

“Not safe,” he said in a voice strained by cold.

“It’s just for a few hours,” I argued. “And I would enjoy little time to myself.”

I could not tell whether my words upset him or not, but I did not care. I was relieved to finally arrive at the tavern and let the warmth and the thick smell of sour cream and baking potatoes engulf me in its welcoming embrace.

In my own room, I almost wept as I stripped away my uniform and my shirt, gray with sweat and dirt, and the reverse corset — I’d been wearing it for so long I worried my body would forever retain its shape. Two buckets of hot water were generously prepared for me, and I sunk gratefully into a tin tub by the stove with the full intention of not leaving it until impending departure absolutely demanded it.

I closed my eyes, savoring the water hot enough to fill the tiny, whitewashed room with thick fluffy clumps of steam. I sighed, feeling my body gradually reacquire its God-given shape, almost weeping with gratitude for small mercies. Truly, if I could spend the rest of my days in this tub, I would be content.

I must’ve slept a little, because the water was suddenly no longer hot and I found myself shivering. I climbed out, dried myself, and put on a clean cotton shirt. Before restoring the monstrosity of the reverse corset to its rightful place over my shoulders and chest, I decided to clean it. The cork and the cloth could definitely use a bath as well — there was a distinct smell of sweat lingering about them, and I decided to eliminate it, even at the cost of appearing less masculine.

I kneeled before my tub and lathered the contraption until it smelled of nothing but soap. I rinsed it in cold water and hung it by the brick stove to dry.

The steam had dissipated, and only a few forlorn drops of condensation slid down the windowpanes. I took a look around me. The room was almost shockingly clean, with an uneven but freshly swept wooden floor that was now decorated with half-moons of my wet footprints. Whitewashed walls, adorned only with two cheap woodcuts depicting some peasant celebration embarrassing in its earnestness, still smelled a little of chalk, as did the recently whitewashed stove. The tiny windows, decorated by an elaborate tracery of hoarfrost vines and flowers, still let in the pale afternoon light, but soon it would be time for me to go back to the train. I sighed and stretched on my bed, covered by a coverlet decorated with poppies and cornflowers, telling myself that if I were to fall asleep, Jack would surely wake me up.

When I opened my eyes again, I felt rested and refreshed, and the quality of light streaming in had barely changed. I put on my corset and stretched, and then I smelled something burning. At first, I rubbed my eyes leisurely and thought of a giant kitchen downstairs, with a woodstove of gargantuan proportions exhaling fire and smoke like the mouth of Gehenna: hypothetical but nevertheless terrifying. The smoke persisted, and it was only when I tasted ash in back of my throat that it occurred to me the fire was not related to the kitchen, and promised not a meal but a disaster.

I put on my uniform, grabbed my satchel, and pushed the door. It remained closed. I jiggled the handle, my mind still fuzzy after sleep but growing sharp once I realized the door was not stuck but deliberately locked from the outside, and saw tendrils of smoke seeping under the door. I threw myself against the door; my cork shoulder did not hurt, but the door did not budge either. After several attempts, I gave up primarily because the thick veil of smoke made my eyes sting and my throat constrict with irrepressible cough.

My room was on the second floor and I rushed to the window, coughing and calling for help — not too loudly, because even though my life was in danger, I feared that outright panic would be unbecoming for a hussar. I yanked at the window, but it was frozen solid.

Irrational fear flared up then — the realization I was trapped, alone — for the first time in days, I was alone — and that I had no one but my own self to help me. Terrible visions crowded by mind — charred remains, red blisters opening like flowers in a twisted coal form no one would ever recognize as human, would never recognize as me… I had to slap my own cheek to regain a semblance of sense.

With my face burning from the slap as well as heat, I put my shoulder to good use again, managing to shake loose the frozen frame. As the heat in the room and my own exertions made my face bead with sweat, I pushed the window open with what felt like an effort almost too colossal for my arms. The window swung open, and I looked into a small back street, empty save for a bundled up old woman on the corner, who was screaming (very unhussar-like) for help, gesturing at the thick pillars of smoke pouring out of the windows of the first and the second floors. I panicked at first but soon realized the inhabitants and other visitors must’ve escaped through the front door. I hoped that I was the only one locked in.

Thankfully, tall snowdrifts had built up by the back wall of the tavern — the snow seemed to have been shoveled against the wall, all the way up to the first floor windows. I crossed myself, tossed my satchel out of the window, and jumped. My breath caught at the sudden hard impact — the snow was packed tight, and felt little softer than the pavement below it. My right ankle shifted inside my boot with a sickening grinding sound and a wrenching sensation, and I staggered away from the building. My right foot throbbed with pain and refused to support even an ounce of my weight. I cursed through my teeth, picked up my satchel, and hopped on one foot down the street, along the two long tracks worn by the wheels of carts and carriages. I headed for the corner, where I hoped to find a way into the front street, to make sure that Jack was there, alive and unharmed. Worry gnawed at me as I hopped, painfully, laboriously — this was the first time since we had met that I needed Jack and he failed to come to my aid. One hand resting against the solid, packed snow, helping to maintain my balance, I rounded the corner, to the sound of shouts and the sight of orange flames reaching from the windows of the first floor like questing fingers. The commotion overwhelmed me and I was jostled back and forth by people rushing about; I almost lost my balance a few times. Still, despite all, my eyes searched the crowd; the absence of Jack’s tall figure was more obvious than I dared to admit to myself.

It took a few minutes for the fire wagon, drawn by four stout, small horses with shaggy fetlocks, to arrive at the tavern. The long yellow tongues of flame wagged from every window and licked the blistering walls. The paint burned and peeled, and the stone underneath charred. I bit my lips, seized by the ancestral memory of Moscow burning at the time of Napoleon — even though I did not experience it myself, I heard stories from my aunt and my mother often enough to be able to taste ash and crumbling brick every time Napoleon was mentioned. Now I tasted it regardless.

I waited with everyone else, my teeth chattering, as the firemen unrolled the hose and brought out a pump. The water in the wagon’s barrel was frozen, and one of the firemen had to crack the ice with the blunt end of an axe.

They pumped a thin, uncertain stream that occasionally rose as high as the second story windows but quickly abated, and then reared up again. The flames guttered and went out when the water hit them, then quickly grew to their former size. It was becoming obvious the fire and water could chase each other like this forever, neither gaining an upper hand, as the tavern gradually charred and grew disfiguring tumors of ice. The water froze the moment it touched any portion of wall not in flames. As I watched the icy gray lumps grow, I realized how cold it was — how cold I felt. My twisted ankle, so swollen by then it filled my boot as tightly as rising dough fills a too-small bowl, was thankfully numb; so was the rest of me. At least, this is the only explanation I could find for the sense of curious calm that enveloped me. I thought of Jack, who was not among the throng outside; surely, he wouldn’t be trapped inside and burned to death — he would be strong enough to break the door if it was locked from the outside, he could jump from any window and do so without hurting himself… he must have gone to the train, I said to myself. I should hurry there too.

There was no chance of finding a carriage near the sluggish inferno, so I hobbled away, my injured foot numb enough to put a modicum of weight on it. I wondered as I hobbled who had started the fire. I assumed, it was the English, but it seemed possible that Nightingale would not be above having the Nikolashki or some other unsavory branch of secret police doing as she bid.

It occurred to me I had seen neither foreigners nor plain clothed policemen at the tavern — the arsonists either escaped before I got there, or found their way out the back of the building. Would they chase me? I could not run, and felt too tired and distraught to hide. It wasn’t quite despair that hung over me like a thick veil; it was the sense of resignation. If I were captured I would probably feel only relief. I stumbled along, smelling the pungent scent of smoke permanently trapped in my clothes and hair, hoping for either a carriage or a policeman to come along and take me somewhere I could sit down and finally stop running.

I had not thought about the university in days, and now I yearned to be there. It was becoming increasingly plain I might never make it back at all let alone in time for the third quarter. If I survived this adventure and returned home, I only hoped the rector would be merciful and allow me to resume my studies next year. Otherwise, I would be expelled, tossed out. If that were to happen, death by the hand of Dame Nightingale would be certainly preferable.

I managed to hail a carriage; a sullen freedman and his large, bay horse studied me with suspicion and a remarkably similar shine of dark, bulging eyes, but agreed to take me to the station. My breath clouded the air inside, as the driver sang to himself and clapped his mittened hands. His horse, evidently encouraged by this, snuffled and neighed.

The train was still there. I found the compartment empty of Jack but also empty of policemen or spies or any other foes; only the two Chinese gentlemen, Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi nodded and smiled at me. I settled in my seat and immediately pressed my forehead to the frozen window, to thaw out a clear patch large enough to observe the goings-on on the platform.

I worried about Jack, although I could not imagine him dead — such a little fire, such an obvious and feeble arson were designed not to kill but to scare him, to drive him away — I imagined him running, leaping tall buildings, leading the pursuit away from me… something he would do. Sweet old Jack.

Every passing second resonated in my mind like a heavy stroke of Grandfather’s clock that used to decorate my father’s study when I was an infant — I still remembered the heavy, weighty sound. I felt the ghostly clock hand move, slow and inexplicable, its blade shredding my heart with worry, each little step another opportunity lost.